DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.12249#0095
64 RESULTS OP FORMER SEPULCHRAL RESEARCHES.
investigate the condition of some sepulchres which had
heen violated. When foreign and conquering nations
succeeded to the dominion of the country, the sanctity of
the old tomhs was not likely to he more inviolate, and
the description of one, which is presently to follow,
will show one form of the treatment to which they
appear to have heen liahle, for example, in Ptolemaic
and Roman times. But besides such authoritative
and open appropriation, robbery not only of ancient
but of contemporary sepulchral deposits was probably
as common as the temptations they might offer would
suggest.* Letronne has translated a papyrus in the
Louvre, dated under Philometer and Eucrgetcs II.
(180 to 116 years B.C.) in which an official owner
of tombs, called there a Colchytus, complains to a
Theban magistrate that one which was his property
had been broken open and rifled, t Lastly, as we
approach nearer our own day, a stronger impulse
was given in the same direction, for, at a very early
period of modern European intercourse with the East,
* This seems universally, in early days, to Lave been a subject of
dread. See among many well-known instances the curious one in
the Phoenician inscription on the sarcojihagus of Esmunazar, found
at Sidon. Memoire sur le Sarcopkage d'Usmunacnr par le Due de
Luynes: Paris, 1S5G.
t Note to Didot's Aristophanes ap. Feydeau, Hist, des Usages
Funebres, p. 1G7. It is needless to refer to the narrative of Strabo as
to the tombs open and penetrable in his day, or to point to the
scribbles by Greek visitors on their walls, showing that then, as
now, they had ceased to be sacred, and were liable to the same in-
excusable defacement from which they still suffer.
investigate the condition of some sepulchres which had
heen violated. When foreign and conquering nations
succeeded to the dominion of the country, the sanctity of
the old tomhs was not likely to he more inviolate, and
the description of one, which is presently to follow,
will show one form of the treatment to which they
appear to have heen liahle, for example, in Ptolemaic
and Roman times. But besides such authoritative
and open appropriation, robbery not only of ancient
but of contemporary sepulchral deposits was probably
as common as the temptations they might offer would
suggest.* Letronne has translated a papyrus in the
Louvre, dated under Philometer and Eucrgetcs II.
(180 to 116 years B.C.) in which an official owner
of tombs, called there a Colchytus, complains to a
Theban magistrate that one which was his property
had been broken open and rifled, t Lastly, as we
approach nearer our own day, a stronger impulse
was given in the same direction, for, at a very early
period of modern European intercourse with the East,
* This seems universally, in early days, to Lave been a subject of
dread. See among many well-known instances the curious one in
the Phoenician inscription on the sarcojihagus of Esmunazar, found
at Sidon. Memoire sur le Sarcopkage d'Usmunacnr par le Due de
Luynes: Paris, 1S5G.
t Note to Didot's Aristophanes ap. Feydeau, Hist, des Usages
Funebres, p. 1G7. It is needless to refer to the narrative of Strabo as
to the tombs open and penetrable in his day, or to point to the
scribbles by Greek visitors on their walls, showing that then, as
now, they had ceased to be sacred, and were liable to the same in-
excusable defacement from which they still suffer.