volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

154 The Missing Fragment of the Aristotle Papyri Found.
visits to villages on both sides of the Nile, I gained
the information I sought at Beni Suwef, and finally
found the piece of papyrus itself in the hands of a
gentleman at Asyut. I had no difficulty at all in
arranging the matter with him, and I took the fragment
with me to Luxor. The next question was how to get
it to London. It was quite hopeless to expect that
the Service of Antiquities would allow it to leave the
country, and I did not want to take it with me to
Mesopotamia. At length I bought a set of Signor
Beato's wonderful Egyptian photographs, which could
be used for exhibition in the Egyptian Galleries of the
British Museum, and having cut the papyrus into
sections, I placed these at intervals between the photographs,
tied them up in some of Madame Beato's gaudy
paper wrappers, and sent the parcel to London by
registered book-post. Before I left Egypt a telegram
told me that the parcel had arrived safely, and that its
contents were exactly what had been hoped for. I
then spent a busy week in collecting Egyptian antiquities,
and found in the various villages about Luxor
and in the neighbourhood many objects of considerable
interest. The weather was very hot and the atmosphere,
on account of the inundation, was damp and
steamy. A strong southerly breeze, which seemed to
grow hotter each day, made it dif&cult to saw wood
and make the packing cases for my acquisitions, but
with the help of the Rev. Chauncey Murch, who was a
first-rate carpenter, this work was finished, and I handed
over to Messrs. Thos. Cook and Son a considerable
number of cases for transport to Cairo. I left Luxor
at dawn on the i8th, and found the passage to Asyut
full of interest. I had never seen the Nile in flood
before and it was a most wonderful sight. In the
Thebaid the waters reached almost to the hiUs on the
western bank, and eastward the river appeared to have
become an inland sea. Men, women, children and
cattle were all huddled together on the little mounds
on which the villages were built, and the great dykes,
which also served as roads, were swallowed up in the