Images courtesty of University of California, The Bancroft Library.
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Dear Madam,1
I am very sorry that you have
been put to the trouble of writing again, for
your first letter duly reached me, and
there only reason for my not acknowledging
your kind acceptance of our proposals
was that I understood from Dr Reisner2
that he was going to communicate with you
and preferred to keep the correspondence
in his own hands. Now however I have
no hesitation in begging you to accept
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from Mr Hunt and myself our best
thanks for your readiness to agree to
the proposed arrangement, and in u assuring
you that nothing will be lacking on our
part to render the first Part of the
Tebtunis Papyri as important and
interesting a volume as possible. We
have now for several months been
working hard at the papyri found in the
crocodile mummies, which belong to the
period from B.C. 130–80; and a large
part of the volume is already in type.
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We expect to finish writing it by the end
of the year when we leave for a three
months visit to Egypt. During our
absence the rest of the book will be printed,
and we shall bring it out in May 1902.3
Owing to the great length of several of the
papyri and the necessity for an extensive
commentary, the first volume will be nearly
double the size that we ^first suggested as the
normal one (300 pp.); but we hope that
you will not object to this, for the gain
to science in issuing all the papyri of the
same period together will be considerable,
and since the papyri have all to be published
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eventually, it will be cheaper in4 the end
to make one volume than two of the present
selection especially as the Egypt Exploration
Fund5 is paying 3/5 of the cost of printing the
present volume.
The papyri which are published in Part I6
are of exceptional importance and interest,
and we are confident that the learned world
will not be slow to appreciate the
services to science which your munificence
has rendered.
If it would be convenient to you to send us
£100 each on account by Christmas, we should
be very grateful, since we are not being paid
anything this year by the Egypt Exploration Fund.7
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2
P.S. Since writing the above, I have received
a letter from Prof. Wheeler enclosing a letter
from the Chairman of the Editorial Committee
giving directions about the form of the
letter page – which we will of course
carry out. The Committee recommend
500 pages as the standard size of the
volumes in the Archaeology series, which
is entirely in accord with the size of
the first volume which we had ourselves
proposed, as stated above.
B.P.G.
To Mrs Phoebe A. Hearst.
1. Refers to Phoebe Hearst.
3. This was an optimistic estimate: The publication of P.Tebt. I was announced on 2 August 1902 (cf. St James’s Gazette of that date, p. 6).
4. "in" is supplied here as a hole punch has deleted any text between "cheaper" and "the," and it was most likely written in this space.
5. Forerunner to the Egypt Exploration Society.
6. "Par" is either corrected or overwritten.
7. This is true, but they would be excavating again for the EEF in January (as suggested by the dates at the top of the first page).