EGYPTOLOGIST

[Sir Flinders Petrie [Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie], distinguished British Egyptologist.] Autograph Signature on fragment of a letter.

Author: 
Sir Flinders Petrie [Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie (1853-1942)], distinguished British Egyptologist, Edwards Professor of Egyptian Archaeology and Philology at University College London
Petrie
Publication details: 
No place or date.
£100.00
Petrie

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. Irregular rectangle of watermarked laid paper, roughly 10.5 x 3.5 cm, cut from a letter in response to a request for an autograph. In good condition, lightly aged, with vertical fold to left of signature. Good clear signature. Reads: ‘Yours very sincerely, / W. M. F Petrie.’ On the reverse is a fragment of the letter: ‘[...] The founders of [...] by months. That the Egns. recognised the Start of Dynasties at the time is shewn by the 1st king [...] parodying - the titles [...]’

[Alexander Hamilton, 10th Duke of Hamilton, Scottish politician, dandy and connoisseur.] Autograph Letter Signed ('C: H: & B.') [to Sir John Robison?], regarding a box 'for smoaking segars', and recipient's 'partiality for the banks of the Clyde'.

Author: 
Alexander Hamilton (1767-1852), 10th Duke of Hamilton, 7th Duke of Brandon, Scottish politician, manuscript collector, dandy and connoisseur, son-in-law of William Beckford [Sir John Robison
Publication details: 
'Thomas's Hotel [i.e. Thomas's Hotel, Berkeley Square, London] | March ye 21st.' [1822]
£45.00

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. 2pp, 12mo. Thirty lines of text. In good condition, lightly aged. Folded twice. Part of the second leaf of the bifolium, detached, is endorsed 'Duke of Hamilton 21 March 1822'. The recipient's identity is presumed from the reference in the letter to 'Mrs Robison'. He thanks him for his 'obliging note' and 'the drawing of the [Kullicum?] for smoaking segars', which is a 'very kind attention on your part'. As he is '[f]earfull lest some accident should happen', he has 'desired that the box may not be forwarded to London'.

[Sir Richard Owen, palaeontologist.] Autograph Letter Signed to Lady Cullum, enclosing a long translation by Samuel Birch of inscriptions on an Egyptian statue in the British Museum, annotated by Owen and with transcription of letter to him by Birch.

Author: 
Sir Richard Owen (1804-1892), palaeontologist, first Director of Natural History Museum, opponent of the theory of evolution [Samuel Birch (1813-1885), Egyptologist; Lady Ann Cullum of Hardwick House]
Publication details: 
Owen's letter to Lady Cullum dated from Sheen Lodge, Richmond Park, 5 May 1867. Transcription of Birch's letter to Owen dated from British Museum [London], 9 July 1860.
£850.00

An interesting item in the field of Victorian Egyptology. The subject is what Owen describes here as 'one of the oldest Statues of an Egyptian Notable in the British Museum'. Its current Museum Number is EA103, and it has been in the Museum since 1835, but the details of its acquisition are unclear. In his translation Birch calls the sitter 'the Royal Scribe, Amenhelp', but the current BM description begins: 'Scribal statue of Amenhotep son of Hapu: of black grano-diorite. Hieroglyphic texts are inscribed on the papyrus unrolled on his lap and on the statue plinth.

[Arthur Weigall, Egyptologist.] Autograph Letter Signed to F. Eyles regarding his work as set designer for London revues, referring to Gertie Millar, Fay Compton, Robert Hale, Phyllis Monkman, Raymond Rôze, King of the Belgians, President Roosevelt.

Author: 
Arthur Weigall [Arthur Edward Pearse Brome Weigall] (1880-1934), Egyptologist who succeeded Howard Carter at Luxor as Chief Inspector of Antiquities for Upper Egypt, set designer for the London stage
Publication details: 
'The Studio | 117. Fulham Rd.' [London.] 22 March [1916].
£180.00

3pp, 12mo. Bifolium. In good condition, lightly aged. Folded once. With envelope addressed to 'F. Eyles Esq. | 38 Bedford Place, | Russell Square, | WC'. Year of letter added in pencil. Signed 'Arthur Weigall'. Having made his name in Luxor as an Egyptologist, Weigall was a successful set-designer for the London revues during the First World War, and the present item concerns a magazine article regarding this work.

[Dame Freya Stark and Peggy Drower.] 15 items from the papers of Stark's assistant Peggy Drower, including two letters to her from Stark's biographer Jane F. Geniesse, with a copy the book, an Autograph Card Signed from Caroline Moorhead.

Author: 
Peggy Drower [Mrs Margaret Hackforth Jones] (1911-2012), Egyptologist and Dame Freya Stark's last assistant at the Ikwan-al-Hurriayah in Cairo [Jane Fletcher Geniesse; Caroline Moorhead]
Publication details: 
Material from London and Washington. Dating from between 1993 and 2001.
£195.00

The material is loosely inserted in a copy of 'Passionate Nomad. The Life of Freya Stark' by Jane Fletcher Geniesse (New York: Random House, 1999). xxvi + 402 + [2]pp., 8vo. Very good, in like price-clipped dustwrapper, and inscribed to Drower by her daughter. Drower is described on p.296 as 'daughter of Freya's old Baghdad friend Lady Drower, [who] followed Pam Hore-Ruthven as her assistant and spent two years trying to get repaid for the cost, not to mention the enormous effort, of packing up Freya's belongings and sending them to Asolo after the war'.

[book, limited edition] Causeries sur les Hiéroglyphes, et deux Étapes de l'Histoire Ancienne de l'Égypte [Egyptology].

Author: 
Adolphe Cattaui Bey [Egyptology; Egyptologist]
Causeries sur les Hiéroglyphes [Book]
Publication details: 
Cairo: Librarie d'Art Stavrinos et Cie, 23, Rue Kasr el-Nil. 1925. [Imprimé sur les Presses de l'Imprimerie de l'Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale au Caire]
£125.00
Causeries sur les Hiéroglyphes [Book]

Small 4to, [vi] + 135 pp. Frontispiece and three plates, with illustrations and cartouches in text. Internally tight and sound, on aged paper, in worn and stained brown-cloth half-binding, decorative endpapers, sprung hinges. Number 43 of 400 copies. Scarce: no copy in the British Library, and the only copy on COPAC at the University of London SOAS.

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