There is another point to be kept in mind in any comparison of Egypt and Babylon or Assyria with Greece in the matter of magic. Our evidence proving the great part played by magic in the ancient oriental civilizations comes directly from them to us without intervening tampering or alteration except in the case of the early periods. But classical literature and philosophy come to us as edited by Alexandrian librarians[106] and philologers, as censored and selected by Christian and Byzantine readers, as copied or translated by medieval monks and Italian humanists. And the question is not merely, what have they added? but also, what have they altered? what have they rejected? Instead of questioning superstitious passages in extant works on the ground that they are later interpolations, it would very likely be more to the point to insert a goodly number on the ground that they have been omitted as pagan or idolatrous superstitions. [Sidenote: More magical character of directly transmitted Greek remains.] Suppose we turn to those writings which have been unearthed just as they were in ancient Greek; to the papyri, the lead tablets, the so-called Gnostic gems. How does the proportion of magic in these compare with that in the indirectly transmitted literary remains? If it is objected that the magic papyri[107] are mainly of late date and that they are found in Egypt, it may be replied that they are as old as or older than any other manuscripts we have of classical literature and that its chief storehouse, too, was in Egypt at Alexandria. As for the magical curses written on lead tablets,[108] they date from the fourth century before our era to the sixth after, and fourteen come from Athens and sixteen from Cnidus as against one from Alexandria and eleven from Carthage. And although some display extreme illiteracy, others are written by persons of rank and education. And what a wealth of astrological manuscripts in the Greek language has been unearthed in European libraries by the editors of the _Catalogus Codicum Graecorum Astrologorum_![109] And occasionally archaeologists report the discovery of magical apparatus[110] or of representations of magic in works of art. [Sidenote: Progress of science among the Greeks.]