‘Huntley and Palmer’s Best’

Winters were spent in Egypt. Thirty foremen and a hundred workmen (in those days the wages came to £30 a week for the lot) attacked the mounds. They found papyri, mixed with earth and other rubbish, heaped thirty feet deep.

[lid of a biscuit tin with pencilled note: 'Several demotic, one Greek']

“Several Demotic, One Greek”: previously, Ginger Nuts

The finds were collected in baskets, then boxed and shipped back to Oxford - one roll in an old biscuit tin (‘Huntley and Palmer’s Best’). It was a lonely life, and even potentially dangerous; a shopping list of Hunt’s includes medicines, fish-hooks, The Old Curiosity Shop and a revolver with forty cartridges. “Good luck with the gravedigging”, wrote Grenfell’s brother.

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