volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

150 The Papyri from Hermopolis.
to these tombs were the ruins of a Coptic monastery
and the graves of many of its monks.
The Copts made no attempt to get the tombs cleared
until the following summer, when the great heat usually
paralysed the energies of the inspectors of the Service
of Antiquities, and the contents of the tombs were left
to take care of themselves. In September it became
possible to enter the tombs of the lower series in the
spur of the hill, and the searchers found that several
of the coffins in them had been ransacked in ancient
times by tomb robbers, who had broken up many
mummies and left the pieces lying in the coffins. I kept
in communication with the natives who were making
the search for papyri, and I received from one of them
in November, 1888, a letter saying that they had found
some good-sized rolls of papyrus in a painted cartonnage
box. The writer of this letter and two of his partners
met me in Port Sa'id in April, i88g, for I had informed
him from Aden when I expected to arrive there, and
we discussed the purchase of all these papyri and they
named their price. The papyri reached England in due
course and the Trustees bought them, and immediately
some busybodies accused me of wasting the funds
of the Museum by paying a " fool-price " for the papyri,
and others said I had taken advantage of the "poor
natives " and robbed them by paying for the papyri
less than they were worth. As a matter of fact the
natives were paid more than they asked, and they
were perfectly satisfied, and did business with me for
at least twenty years more, in fact .as long as they had
anything to sell.
But to return to my narrative. I left London on
September 26th, 1890, embarked on the Messageries
Maritimes s.s. " Niger " at Marseilles on the 27th and
sailed for Alexandria. The ship had her full complement
of passengers, among whom were many Brothers
and Sisters belonging to various Roman Catholic Orders,
who were returning to their monasteries and nunneries
in Egypt, Palestine and Syria. I made the acquaintance
of Mr. Joyce, the Director of the Alexandria Water