ke in
identifying the land of Keftiu with Phoenicia.

We must not, however, say too much in dispraise of the Ptolemaic
Egyptians and their works. We have to be grateful to them indeed for the
building of the temples of Edfu and Dendera, which, owing to their later
date, are still in good preservation, while the best preserved of the
old Pharaonic fanes, such as Medinet Habu, have suffered considerably
from the ravages of time. Eor these temples show us to-day what an
old Egyptian temple, when perfect, really looked like. They are, so to
speak, perfect mummies of temples, while of the old buildings we have
nothing but the disjointed and damaged skeletons.

A good deal of repairing has been done to these buildings, especially
to that at Edfu, of late years. But the main archaeological interest of
Ptolemaic and Roman times has been found in the field of epigraphy and
the study of papyri, with which the names of Messrs. Kenyon, Grenfell,
and Hunt are chiefly connected. The treasures which have lately been
obtained by the British Museum in the shape of the manuscripts of
Aristotle's "Constitution of Athens," the lost poems of Bacchylides, and
the Mimes of Herondas, all of which have been published for the trustees
of that institution by Mr. Kenyon, are known to those who are interested
in these subjects. The long series of publications of Messrs.
Grenfell and Hunt, issued at the expense of the Egypt Exploration Fund
(Graeco-Roman branch), with the exception of the volume of discoveries
at Teb-tunis, which was issued by the University of California, is also
well known.

The two places with which Messrs. Grenfell and Hunt's work has been
chiefly connected are the Fayyum and Behnesa, the site of the ancient
Permje or Oxyr-rhynchus. The lake-province of the Fayyum, which attained
such prominence in the days of the XIIth Dynasty, seems to have had
little or no history during the whole period of the New Empire, but in
Ptolemaic times it revived and again became one of the richest and
most important provinces of Egypt. The town of Arsinoe was founded at
Crocodilopolis, where are now the mounds of Kom el-Faris (The Mound of
the Horseman), near Medinet el-Payyum, and became the capital of the
province. At Illahun, just outside the entrance to the Fayyum, was the
great Nile harbour and entrepot of the lake-district, called Ptolemais
Hormos.

The explorations of Messrs. Hogarth, Grenfell, and Hunt in the years
of 1895-6 and 1898-9