Passing by other discoveries, some of these including fragments of a play by Menander, of whose hundred comedies none are perfect, we come to the thousands of Greek papyri found in 1896-97 by Messrs. Grenfell and Hunt on the site of the ancient Oxyrhynchus, the capital of a nome of Middle Egypt. The full list of these relics has not yet been published, and it will take some years to decipher them all; but among the literary portion are fragments of works known and unknown. Among the latter is a papyrus of the second century, containing a collection of _Logia_, or _Sayings_, of Jesus Christ, some of which are familiar, whilst others are wholly new. The following translation of these, made by the Rev. A. C. Headlam, is based on the text as provisionally settled by Professors Lock and Sanday. 1. (Jesus saith, Cast out first the beam out of thine own eye), and then shalt thou see to cast out the mote in thy brother's eye. 2. Jesus saith, Except ye fast to the world, ye shall not find the kingdom of God; and unless ye keep the true Sabbath, ye shall not see the Father. 3, 4. Jesus saith, I stood in the midst of the world, and in my flesh I was seen of them, and I found all men drunken, not one found I thirsty among them; and my soul is weary for the sons of men, for they are blind in their heart, and see (not, poor and know not) their poverty. 5. Jesus saith, Wherever there be (two, they are not without) God, and if anywhere there be one, I am with him; raise the stone and there thou shalt find me; cleave the wood, and there am I. 6. Jesus saith, A prophet is not received in his own country, nor doth a physician heal his neighbours. 7. Jesus saith, A city built on the summit of a lofty mountain, and firmly established, cannot fall nor be hidden. 8. Jesus saith, Thou hearest with (one ear), but the other hast thou closed. Discoveries of this sort bring with them temptation to dwell on their significance, but that must be resisted. There is also temptation to refer to other materials bearing on the history of the Greek alphabet--notably to the inscriptions on the stupendous statue at Abu Simbel, near the second cataract of the Nile--the mere abstract of which would fill this little volume. But the excerpts--varied enough--already given will suffice to indicate what wealth of literature for our knowledge of the past these venerable relics yield, and how poor beyond redemption would the world be if shorn of those records of human thought and feeling, of those grave and gay pictures of life, so closely resembling our own, whereby, too, we learn how superficial have been the changes in human nature throughout the ages of man's tenancy of the earth. THE DIFFUSION OF THE "PHŒNICIAN" ALPHABET