volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

348 The Papyrus from Meir Secured.
them, and they, too, were enquiring everywhere for
Greek papyri, and keeping a sharp watch on the natives.
I also knew that some of the officials connected with the
British Army of Occupation would gladly prevent any
good thing being acquired for the British Museum.
At length I dared greatly, and told him that I would
buy the papyrus, but that I could not pay him until
I had authority to do so from London. But this did
not please him, for he wanted ready money, and he
wrapped up the papyrus and prepared to leave the house
with it. 1 felt that it would be a colossal blunder on
my part to let him do this, so I told him that I would
give him a substantial sum of money out of my own
pocket as a deposit, provided that he would place the
papyrus with a native friend of mine in Cairo until I
returned from Upper Eg5rpt. He agreed to this and
went back to Cairo with me, and, having received the
money, he deposited the papyrus with my friend. I
then sent the copy of the few lines of the Greek text
which I had made to the Principal Librarian in London,
and asked for instructions, and I made my way to
Suhag in Upper Egypt as soon as possible.
When I arrived there I discovered, to my great joy,
that the sites which I had examined in 1892 and had
arranged to have cleared, had yielded very good results.
In one tomb which had just been opened were the
mummies and coffins and funerary equipment of a whole
family of ten or twelve persons, and they were singularly
interesting. The head of the family seems to have
been a Romano-Egyptian, and his two wives, who lay
one on each side of him, were blonde women, probably
natives of some country to the north of the Mediterranean.
The facts were evident from the brightlypainted
cartonnage cases which covered the mummies
and were intended to reproduce the face of the man
and the faces and figures of his wives. The hair ornaments
of the women, and their necklaces, breast ornaments,
rings, armlets, anklets, etc., were copied in gold
and colours, and the way in which their garments were
fastened and worn, and the decorated designs on the