208 Royal Irish Academy. 



There is a point affecting these Gurob documents -whicli remains 

 unexplained — When, and how, did they become available as waste 

 paper for the purpose of the coffin-makers ? Dr. Mahaffy has a theory 

 to account for this ; indeed, his ingenuity in devising explanations of 

 every difficulty which arises is inexhaustible ; and I confess that in 

 reading, not this memoir only, but his other writings also, I find 

 myself assuming a sceptical attitude by way of safeguard against the 

 temptation to accept, as representiag historical facts, his plausible 

 hypotheses and subtle combinations. It is just, however, to add that 

 he himself often regards them as merely tentative and provisional. 

 Remarking, in his commentary on the papyri, that all these documents 

 belong to the times of the Second and Third Ptolemies, he supposes that 

 this was due to the disturbance which broke out in the later years of 

 Ptolemy lY. He conjectures that the settlers lost their lands in the 

 general confusion of the insurrection, which he represents as having 

 been protracted and obstinate, and renewed again upon the accession 

 of Epiphanes. I do not so understand Polybius ; and Dr. Mahaffy, in 

 his Empire of the Ptolemies, seems to have altered his view of the 

 matter. The revolt was, according to Polybius, marked by mutual 

 cruelty and treachery, but not by any pitched battle or siege or any- 

 thing worthy of narration. It was a peasant revolt, as Dr. Mahaffy 

 now sees, which never seriously shook the State, and could not have per- 

 manently dispossessed the military colonists. 15 o mere revolt — nothing 

 short of a successful revolution — could have had such an effect. The 

 disturbances at the beginning of the reign of Epiphanes were a popu- 

 lar rising in Alexandria, not against the royal house, but in its vindi- 

 cation and defence against Agathocles and his sister. And, in fact, 

 there are amongst the Petrie documents several of the reign of 

 Epiphanes, so that the local legal registers continued to be maintained. 



IS'ow, if there is really no reason for believing in a " catastrophe " 

 which dispossessed the military grantees, to what conclusion are we 

 led ? The wills, contracts, and other documents found here were no 

 doubt cleared out of official shelves or lockers, possibly at one time ; 

 and, if they had been chronologically arranged, those of a single period 

 would naturally enough be used by one set of coffin-makers. But is 

 it conceivable that the copies of wills in a public registry office (to 

 speak of no other documents) should have been treated as waste paper 

 until a very long period had elapsed since they were recorded, 



