Two Letters from B.P. Grenfell to C.T. Currelly in the Royal Ontario Museum Archive: New Evidence for the Acquisition of Egyptian Antiquities in Canada

Abstract

This article presents and comments upon two unpublished letters, presently housed at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), written by B.P. Grenfell in Oxyrhynchus to his Egypt Exploration Fund (EEF) colleague C.T. Currelly. Though brief, the letters provide valuable insights into matters pertaining to the activities of the EEF at the turn of the twentieth century, including the social relationships between various EEF excavators and how such relationships contributed to the movement of artifacts out of Egypt in general and irregularities in the practice of artifact distribution in particular. They also offer new details about the various means by which Currelly was acquiring Egyptian artifacts at a formative time for what would become Canada's foremost archaeological museum, the ROM.