Images courtesty of University of California, The Bancroft Library.
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Dear Mrs Hearst,
Many thanks for your
letter, which has just reached me out
here. I hope that you liked the
appearance of the first volume of the
'Tebtunis Papyri,2 and that if you have
had time to look into it you have found
some matter of interest despite its
somewhat technical character.
The cost of printing and binding the
500 copies which belong to the
University of California was all but
£2403, or over 1100 dollars: the fact
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that the bill presented to you by
the UOxford4 University Press was only
636 dollars is no doubt due to
the profits of sales having been taken
into account. What the precise terms were
arranged upon between the publisher and
the University of California with regard
to profits I do not know, but President
Wheeler could no doubt give you the
details. The profit on each copy ^sold would
however, I expect, be between 8 and 9
dollars, and since the publisher
informed me a few weeks ago that
the volume was having a steady sale,
I hope that you will soon recover
more than the 636 dollars paid.
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With regard to the sum due to Dr
Hunt and myself for editing the volume,
I wrote in November last to President
Wheeler, not knowing where you were;
but the contents would seem not to
have reached you. The balance due
to us, after reckoning the £150
which you kindly advanced to us in
Dec. 1901, is £250 each, or
£500 in all. I shall be leaving
Egypt early in April and return
to Oxford on about April 15th. If
you could be so kind as to send the
£500 to Queen's College by then, it
would be a great convenience to us, for
owing to editing the Tebtunis Papyri
for you we have not received any
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payments from the Egypt Exploration
Fund5 for two years' editing.
Thank you very much for your kind
wishes. It has throughout been a great
pleasure, as well as honour, to work on
your behalf and on that of the University of
California. I am very glad that the
reviews6 of the Tebtunis Papyri which
have appeared do justice to the munificence
which prompted your undertaking.
We are once more engaged upon excavating
for papyri, and with very fair success,
though it will be long before we repeat
the spell of good fortune which attended
us at Tebtunis.
1. Beni Mazar. Grenfell and Hunt have mailed this from their excavations at Oxyrhynchus.
2. Grenfell did not close the quotation mark appearing before "Tebtunis."
3. £25,153.30 when adjusted for inflation (1903 to Apr. 2025) (according to the Bank of England inflation calculator).
4. The "O" in "Oxford" overwrites what appears to be a "U", perhaps the start of "University."
5. Forerunner to Egypt Exploration Society, not part of the University of California.
6. The publication of P.Tebt. I was announced on 2 August 1902 (cf. St James’s Gazette of that date, p. 6), i.e., only 7 months earlier. No substantive review would have appeared yet.