INTRODUCTION On the edge of the Libyan desert, 120 miles south of Cairo, a series of low mounds, covered with Roman and early Arab pottery, marks the spot where stood the capital of the Oxyrhynchite nome. The wide area of the site, and the scale of the buildings and city walls, where traceable, testify to its past size and importance; but it declined rapidly after the Arab conquest, and its modern representative, Behnesa, is a mere hamlet. A flourishing city in Roman times, and one of the chief centres of early Christianity in Egypt, Oxyrhynchus offered a peculiarly attractive field for explorers who, like ourselves, make the recovery of Greek papyri, with all the manifold treasures they may bring, their principal aim. The result of our excavations there during the last winter, an account of which will be published in the next Archaeological Report of the Egypt Exploration Fund, amply justified our anticipations. The ancient cemetery, to which for various reasons the first three weeks' work was devoted, proved on the whole unproductive; but in the rubbish-heaps of the town were found large quantities of papyri, chiefly Greek, ranging in date from the first to the eighth century, and embracing every variety of subject. No site, with the probable exception of Arsinoë, has proved so fertile in this respect; and for the examination and editing of the papyri discovered much time will be required. For the present we are concerned with a single fragment, the remarkable character of which seemed to demand its prompt publication. The document in question is a leaf from a papyrus book containing a collection of Logia or Sayings of our Lord, of which some, though presenting several novel features, are familiar, others are wholly new. It was found |