EGYPTOLOGIST

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

Author: 
Adolphe Cattaui Bey [Egyptology; Egyptologist]
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

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.

[Gerald Massey, poet, spiritualist and Egyptologist.] Autograph Letter Signed to Alfred Miles, taking him to task for his selection of his poems for an anthology, and demanding 'a hand in the selection'.

Author: 
Gerald Massey (1828-1907), poet, spiritualist and discredited Egyptologist [Alfred Henry Miles (1848-1929)
Publication details: 
20 April [no year, but on paper watermarked 1887]; New Southgate.
£120.00

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. 3pp, 12mo. Bifolium. In good condition, lightly aged. Folded for postage. Addressed to 'Alfred Miles Esqre.' and with good bold signature 'Gerald Massey'. Begins: 'Dear Sir / You are quite at liberty to quote from my poems - but I shd. like to have a hand in the selection. / In a collection so large as you contemplate there ought to be nothing but one's best.' If he were to edit such a work he would 'make all living authors so choose their own poems. Sir Richard Grenville is the only one of those you mention that I shd.

[George Ebers, German Egyptologist and novelist.] Autograph Letter Signed, in German, with reference to Graf's arrival with antiquities from Venice, dinner with Winnels, and his fairy tale.

Author: 
Georg Ebers [Georg Moritz Ebers] (1837-1898), German Egyptologist and novelist [Theodor von Graf, Austrian dealer in antiquities]
Publication details: 
15 September 1883. Tutzing [Bavaria].
£100.00

2pp, 16mo. Twenty-eight lines of text, in purple ink. With contemporary English translation on both sides of a separate 16mo leaf. Both items in fair condition, on aged paper, with slight damage to corners from mounts. Trust the translation, the letter is addressed to a 'Dear friend', and begins: 'My friend Graf [i.e. the antiquities dealer Theodor von Graf] arrived yesterday from Venice and brought many most interesting antiquities - His visit prevented my writing to you - but then I hope to show you some of his treasures, next time we meet. He came early and stayed late.

[Stuart Poole [Reginald Stuart Poole], numismatist and Egyptologist.] Signed Secretarial Note, on behalf of the British Museum, declining to purchase ‘the coin of Egbert’.

Author: 
Stuart Poole [Reginald Stuart Poole] (1832-1895), numismatist and Egyptologist, Keeper of the Department of Coins and Medals at the British Museum
Publication details: 
7 March 1885; on embossed British Museum letterhead.
£45.00

1p, 12mo. On first leaf of bifolium. In good condition, with slight wear at foot of gutter. Folded once for postage. The signature ‘Reginald Stuart Poole’ is large and expansive. The text, in another hand, reads: ‘Sir, / I regret to say that I cannot entertain the purchase of the coin of Egbert which you showed me the other day’.

[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.

[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.

Syndicate content