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BEHNESA FUOM THE NORTHWEST AND LOOKING ACROSS THE MOUNDS OF OXYRHYNCHUS.

expected of an earlier date than the fourth century, to which our oldest manuscripts of the New Testament belong; for the place was renowned in the fourth and fifth centuries on account of the number of its churches and monasteries, and the rapid spread of Christianity about Oxyrhynchus, as soon as the new religion was officially recognized, implied that it had already taken strong hold during the preceding centuries of persecution.

The wished-for opportunity for digging at Oxyrhynchus offered itself last autumn, when leave was obtained by the Egypt Exploration Fund for Professor Flinders Petrie and myself to excavate anywhere in the strip of desert between the Fayum and Minya, ninety miles long, in which Oxyrhynchus is situated. That place was chosen to be our headquarters, and work was begun there by Professor Petrie, who, after digging for a week and finding that both the ancient town and the cemetery belonged to the Roman period, handed over the excavations to Mr. Hunt and myself, and left to dig an early Egyptian site some forty miles to the north.

The ruins of Oxyrhynchus are seven miles from the Nile, just inside the desert and on the west bank of the Bahr Yusuf ("Joseph's river"), a branch of the Nile, about 100 yards wide, which runs out of the main stream some distance north of Assiout, and after flowing along the desert edge for 120 miles, cuts through the low range of the Libyan Hills, and creates the fertile oasis of the Fayum. The area covered by the ancient town is a mile and a quarter long by half a mile broad, its modern representative, Behnesa, still occupying a small fraction of it on the east side. It must have remained an important place until medieval times, since, though the village consists of merely a few squalid huts, there are four once handsome mosques, now rapidly falling to ruin, and the surface of about half the whole site is strewn with early or medieval Arabic pottery and debris of houses belonging to the same period.

The decline of Behnesa is due to its unprotected situation on the desert side of the Bahr Yusuf; for it is thus exposed to frequent nocturnal raids on the part of the Bedawin Arabs, who are settled in considerable numbers along this part of the desert edge, and who, in accordance with their immemorial custom, sanctioned, so they claim, by the Creator Himself, eke out their otherwise precarious modes of subsistence by depredations upon their more prosperous neighbors. One of these raids took place while we were there, and an attempt was made to get into our house, which had been built a few yards outside the village; but the would-be marauders decamped on being fired at by our two native guards. Not indeed that they need have been frightened by the antique muzzle-loaders such as our worthy guardians possessed, but the Bedawin, knowing the fellaheen's temperament well enough, does not expect to be resisted. It not infrequently happens that a small party of Bedawin will raid a whole village of fellaheen without any serious opposition; for, as the fellah admits himself, when he hears the robbers in the next house, he lies very still lest he should