volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

364 The Stele of Thetha.
when I was on my way to the Sudan, and I left it at
Luxor in charge of a native who was to take care of it
for me until I returned. During my absence this man
allowed an American tourist to see it, and though—so
I was assured by the native— ^he was told that the stele
was the property of the British Museum, he made a
faulty copy of the text and published it.^ Others
hearing of the stele wished to buy it, and tried to bribe
the native to deliver it into their hands for examination,
but without success. One enterprising German Professor
went so far as to spread a rumour to the effect
that I had died in the Sudan, and renewed his attempts
to bribe the native. Having failed to obtain the stele,
they raised an outcry and said that I was stealing antiquities
out of the tombs and carrying them off to London.
This outcry was absurd, for the natives were very much
alive to the pecuniary value of anticas, and they would
have been the first to prevent anyone taking away for
nothing the things which they regarded as their own
peculiar property. And the natives knew better than
anyone else that the Trustees of the British Museum
always paid fair prices for the things they purchased.
I have often secured valuable antiquities over the heads
of many bidders among the agents for public museums
and private collectors, but this was always due to the
fact that I offered a fair price, and did not try to obtain
a prize below its prime cost. The prices sanctioned by
the Trustees were always fair and reasonable, and often
generous. And the native dealer is well able to appreciate
just dealing and fair treatment.
When the malcontents found that the natives laughed
at them, and that Maspero continued to support me, they
attacked Mr. Howard Carter, Inspector of Antiquities
for Upper Egypt, with the view (it was thought) of getting
him removed from his position. Their accusations
against him were voiced by Mr. J. H. Insinger, a resident
in Luxor, who stated in Le Phare d' Alexandrie for
* See G. C. Pier in American Jnl. of Sem. Languages, April, 1905,
p. 159 ff. The mistakes are corrected in Hieroglyphic Texts, part i
pll. 49-52.