Item #6413 [Autograph note of welcome and thanks to Rev. T. Hill, also noting a discovery]. Amelia B. Edwards.
[Autograph note of welcome and thanks to Rev. T. Hill, also noting a discovery].
[Autograph note of welcome and thanks to Rev. T. Hill, also noting a discovery].
[Autograph note of welcome and thanks to Rev. T. Hill, also noting a discovery].

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[Autograph note of welcome and thanks to Rev. T. Hill, also noting a discovery].

The Larches, Westbury on Trym, Bristol, July 25th, 1885. Autograph note signed on 12mo bifolium letterhead. 2 pp. Old linen tape joining two leaves.

A signed note by well-known British traveler, novelist and journalist Edwards, acknowledging receipt of a presumed donation by Rev. (and mathematician) T. Hill to the Egypt Exploration Fund and divulging the discovery by the Fund of a mathematical manuscript on papyrus. The note reads in full:

Confidential. Dear Sir, in welcoming you very heartily to the ranks of our eminent supporters, I cannot resist the pleasure of telling you (knowing your fame as a mathematician) that we have found a mathematical papyrus. No one knows it yet—so please tell no one. Yours very truly. A. B. E.

 

Appearing on page two are a note, apparently in a secretarial hand, reading “Receipt enclosed with many thanks,” Edwards’s full signature” followed by another note in a secretarial hand reading “Hon; Sec: Egypt Explr. Fund, and a note in Edwards’s hand reading “Rev. T. Hill, D.D. L.L.D.” The aforementioned receipt is not included.

 

Amelia B. Edwards (1831–1892) was a noted Egyptologist, explorer and author who co-founded the Egypt Exploration Society in 1882 with Reginald Stuart Poole of the British Museum, and, at the time of this correspondence, was the Honorable Secretary of the Egypt Exploration Fund. The Society’s discoveries include a shrine for the goddess Hathor, a statue of a cow from Deir el-Bahri, the mortuary temple of Queen Hatshepsut, and the sculpted model of Nefertiti from Amarna. In popular fiction, Elizabeth Peters, pseudonym of Egyptologist Barbara Mertz (1927–2013), based her imposing Amelia Peabody character on Amelia B. Edwards.

 

CONDITION: Good, old folds, minor creasing.

Item #6413

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