Heath, Dunbar I.; Corbaux, Fanny: The Exodus papyri (London, 1855)

THE EXODUS PAPYRI.

already published when it was written. Prose
composition was by no means in its infancy even a
thousand years before the days of Solomon; and
if the application of the epithets concise and dry to
the style of our chronicles had been a little more
appropriate, their historical value would have been
far greater to us. But we must take them as we
find them. Nine parts out of ten the reader will
find to be diffuse and wet enough, and in compa-
rison with their pure bombast the simplicity of the
literature of the Hebrews is all the more striking.

But enough of a subject which lies beneath our
papyri. The present work I feel is a mere intro-
duction to their surface. Let the outward linea-
ments be first made familiar to a large number
of beholders. The significance must be developed
hereafter.

There is no particular reason why I should notice
the papyri in the order in which they happen to
have been published; and, on the contrary, there
is obvious advantage in keeping to what I suppose
to be the chronological order of their arrangement.
The third Anastasi is at any rate a short paper of
only seven pages. It is, I think, the earliest writ-
ten of the whole historical series, and it affords in
proportion to its length, more decisive indications
of its general purport than most of its neighbours.
I use it, therefore, as a convenient vehicle to in-
troduce to the reader those general views with
which, in order to understand the society in which
Moses lived, it is necessary that he should be ac-
quainted.