ase of Arab
names after the conquest, more especially in those of the Archduke
Rainer 's collection from the Fayyum, which was so near the new capital
city, Fustat. In Upper Egypt the change was not noticeable for a long
time, and in the great collection of Coptic _ostraka_ (inscriptions on
slips of limestone and sherds of pottery, used as a substitute for paper
or parchment), found in the ruins of the Coptic monastery established,
on the temple site of Der el-Bahari, we find no Arab names. These
documents, part of which have been published by Mr. W. E. Crum for the
Egypt Exploration Fund, while another part will shortly be issued for
the trustees of the British Museum by Mr. Hall, date to the seventh and
eighth centuries. Their contents resemble those of the earlier papyri
from Oxyrrhynchus, though they are not of so varied a nature and are
generally written by persons of less intelligence, i.e. the monks and
peasants of the monasteries and villages of Tjeme, or Western Thebes.
During the late excavation of the XIth Dynasty temple of Der el-Bahari,
more of these _ostraka_ were found, which will be published for the
Egypt Exploration Fund by Messrs. Naville and Hall. Of actual buildings
of the Coptic period the most important excavations have been those of
the French School of Cairo at Bawit, north of Asyut. This work, which
was carried on by M. Jean Cledat, has resulted in the discovery of very
important frescoes and funerary inscriptions, belonging to the monastery
of a famous martyr, St. Apollo. With these new discoveries of Christian
Egypt our work reaches its fitting close. The frontier which divides the
ancient from the modern world has almost been crossed. We look back from
the monastery of Bawit down a long vista of new discoveries until, four
thousand years before, we see again the Great Heads coming to the Tomb
of Den, Narmer inspecting the bodies of the dead Northerners, and,
far away in Babylonia, Naram-Sin crossing the mountains of the East to
conquer Elam, or leading his allies against the prince of Sinai.

THE END.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria,
Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery, by L.W. King and H.R. Hall

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