In an Antique Land by Amitav Ghosh

just acquired in Palestine a leaf of the Book of Ecclesiasticus has been discovered to-day by Mr S. Schechter, lecturer in Talmudic to the University of Cambridge.’
    In his own preliminary report published in a learned journal called the
Expositor
later the same year, Schechter announced that he had found a part of the original text of Ecclesiasticus (The Book of Wisdom) by Jesus Ben Sira, which was known to have been written in about 200 BC : the original Hebrew had been lost centuries earlier and the book had survived only in Greek translation. ‘If it could be proved,’ he wrote, ‘that Sirach, who flourished in about 200 BC composed his work, as some believe, in the Rabbinic idiom … then between Ecclesiasticus and the books of the Old Testament there must lie centuries, nay there must lie, in most cases, the deep waters of the Captivity.…’
    Neither of the announcements mentioned the Geniza of Fustat as the source of the document: the discovery had so excited Schechter that he had already begun thinking of travelling to Cairo to acquire whatever remained of the documents. Secrecy was essential if the plan was to succeed. He quickly succeeded in enlisting the support of Doctor Charles Taylor, the Master of St John’s College, Cambridge. Taylor was a mathematician but he took a keen interest in Rabbinic studies and he persuaded the University to exercise its considerable influence on Schechter’s behalf. Schechter left in December 1896, taking with him a letter of recommendation for the Chief Rabbi of Cairo from Herman Adler, then the Chief Rabbi of England, and a ‘beautifully ribboned and sealed credential’ from the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge, addressed to the president of the Jewish community of Cairo.
    The times could not have been more propitious for Schechter’s visit. The British administration in Egypt was then presidedover by Sir Evelyn Baring, later Lord Cromer. Known to his subordinates as Over-Baring, he had served in various administrative posts in India and Egypt, and had found little reason to be enthusiastic about the abilites of their modern inhabitants.So little did he think of Egyptians that once, upon hearing a famous Egyptian singer singing a song that went ‘My love is lost, O! People find him for me’, he is known to have commented that it was typical of Egyptians to expect to have somebody else look for their loves. He expressed his opinions trenchantly in an essay entitled ‘The Government of the Subject Races’: ‘We need not always inquire too closely what these people, who are all, nationally speaking, more or less in statu pupillari, themselves think is best in their own interests … it is essential that each special issue should be decided mainly with reference to what, by the light of Western knowledge and experience … we conscientiously think is best for the subject race.’
    Under Lord Cromer’s supervision British officials were moved into key positions in every branch of the country’s administration. Thus, by the time Schechter arrived in Cairo, a beribboned letter from the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University was no mere piece of embossed stationery: it was the backroom equivalent of an imperial edict.
    Schechter was fortunate in that Cromer himself took an interest in the success of his mission. The precise details of what transpired between Schechter and British officialdom and the leaders of Cairo’s Jewish community are hazy, but soon enough the Chief Rabbi of Cairo and Joseph M. Cattaoui Pasha came to a decision that seems little less than astonishing, in retrospect.They decided to make Solomon Schechter a present of their community’s—and their city’s—heritage; they granted him permission to remove everything he wanted from the Geniza,every last paper and parchment, without condition or payment.
    It has sometimes been suggested that Schechter