680 THE EXCAVATIONS AT ABUSIB, EGYPT. 



introduced characters, and sung to the accompaniment of the lyre by 

 the poet himself on festival occasions in honor of some god. He is 

 also recorded to have increased the number of the strings of the lyre 

 to eleven, by which innovation he incurred the displeasure of the 

 Spartans, who considered it to be a corruption of nuisic. But of the 

 numerous compositions credited to him by later writers only a few 

 fragments survive", and of the Persai only three verses were known. 

 The Persai is also in the form of a nome and was first recited at the 

 Panionion festival in honor of Poseidon, about 398 b. c. The part of 

 the nome contained in this papyrus begins with the principal section 

 of the poem, the omphalos, comprising the narrative. The ships are 

 fitted out; the battle begins; the vessels dash against each other; 

 lances fly about; firebrands whir in the air, setting the ships afire, 

 from the glare of which the " smaraged" sea is reddened. The Persian 

 fleet is put to flight; one rich follower of the Persian king battles 

 with the waves, cursing the treacherous sea, and at last sinks while 

 professing his hope for the victory of his king. Other Asiatics cling 

 to rocks in the sea and bewail their inmiinent fate of death or cap- 

 tivity. At last panic seizes also the royal headquarters, and the king, 

 under lamentations, orders a general retreat of his motley army. The 

 victorious Greeks erect a trophy to Zous and celebrate their victory 

 with dance and song. In the epilogue the poet refers to himself, 

 defending his innovation in music against the reproof of the Spartans, 

 and invokes Apollo to "'give the people j^eace and blessing resting on 

 the observation of the law." 



Of the details of the old Egyptian grave finds a better estimate ma}^ 

 be formed when the results of the digging still in progress become 

 available. 



The excavations of the German Orient Society on the soil of the 

 ancient Valley of the Nile have not received the same consideration 

 from the great public as the diggings of the same societ}^ in Bab}- 

 Ionia. To the latter attention was directed by the lectures of Fried- 

 rich Delitzsch, although their contents were but loosely connected 

 with the excavations. The Egyptian work has not received the same 

 treatment. Considering the real scientific results of the excavations 

 in themselves, it can not be denied that the Egj^^tian explorations of 

 the society, directed by Borchardt, have at least been crowned with as 

 great a success as the Babylonian. It is to be hoped that the con- 

 tinued interest of the Government, as also the increasing number of 

 members, will place the society in the condition to pursue its explora- 

 tions with equal vigor in both of these countries whose civilization 

 dominated early antiquity and likewise to extend its research to the 

 countries lying between them, Palestine and Syria. 



"Collected by T, Bergk in his Anthologia Lvrica, 3d edition, Leipzig, 1883, pp. 

 340-343. 



