OLDEST HEBREW WRITING

Evening Post, Volume CIII, Issue 141, 17 June 1922, Page 10

OLDEST HEBREW WRITING

FOURTH CENTURY BUSINESS

LETTERS.

Some little brown scraps of papyrus, shown by Professor Flinders Petrie to members of the Jewish. Historical Society recently, are said to contain the oldest Hebrew writing known, apart from stone inscriptions. Professor Petrie, who was lectaring to the society at University College (Sir Philip. Sassoou preswUng) on the status of the Jews in Egypt, said the papyiri wens part of four letters whose discovery a few weeks ago in Middle Egypt had come as a surprise. They dated from the third or fourth century, arid were ordinary business letters, like the bulk of the Greek papyri of that age. One of them contained1 an inquiry about cinnamon and salt, and another was written on part of a Greek document, probably of the third century. Another interesting exhibit was a reproduction of a hieroglyphic inscription found by tho professor on a. temple monument at Thebes, and the only one to mention the peojplo of Israel. He also showed a model of the Temple Hill at Jerusalem,' of which a replica was set up by the exiled Jews in Egypt under one of the Ptolemies, when they attempted to found a new Jerusalem near Memphis.