Societies and Academies

Abstract

LONDON Royal Society of Literature, June 22.—N. E. S. A. Hamilton, librarian, in the chair. Mr. W. R. Cooper exhibited a Greek Tablet from the Hay Collection, found by the late Mr. Robert Hay in the Aasaseef, Thebes, about 1823. Mr. Cooper stated that the relic was one of peculiar interest, as it was a palimpsest tablet, upon which had been written, in the bold uncials peculiar to the fourth century, a list of familiar Grecian names, and among them that of Athanasius. This circumstance, and the fact that it was found near to the ruins of a Christian church, where a long inscription in honour of Athanasius once existed, seemed to warrant a belief that the tablet had some connection with that famous bishop, the more so as the name was not a common one in Grecian history, and the characters are unquestionably of the period in which he lived. Mr. Cooper was supported in his views by Mr. W. S. Vaux and Mr. Hamilton, who examined the antiquity with much interest, and supplemented his short paper by some very able remarks of their own.