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Show SJ3/&e TELEPHONE CABLE ADDRESS DISTRICT 3330 NATGEOSOC WASHINGTON WASHINGTON 6, D. C. J. R. HILDEBRAND ASSISTANT EDITOR March 30, 1951 Dr. Aziz S. Atiya, Study Room 206, Library of Congress Annex, Washington, D. C. Dear Dr. Atiya: I have just talked with Mr. Joseph Foster, who is most anxious to pay you a courtesy call very briefly on Monday and explain to you why he did not write a letter, which we invariably do, accompanying the return of your manuscript which you were good enough to prepare for us, and the photographs which you took additional time to gather for us. As I told you on the phone, I could not reach Mr. Foster immediately today, but have talked with him and he hopes very much to be able to make a personal explanation to you on Monday, if you can give him the time. Meanwhile, he will call your secretary and try to make an appointment with you for Monday. May I explain again that Mr. Foster rushed the material back to you in the expectation that you might wish to place the article and pictures with some more highly technical journal dealing with biblical history and archeology. Mr. Foster's own siege with the flu has kept him out of the office for a number of days. I am sure his only intention was to get the material back to you in the expectation that it would be of greater use to a scholarly journal, but the belief of our editorial staff and our illustrations division was that the material was too involved and too scholarly for presentation by us to our 2,000,000 members-how many readers that is you can safely multiply by three or four. May I repeat that we appreciate highly the trouble you took in preparing this shorter version of the article for us, in collecting additional pictures at our request so that we might have all the material you had in hand by which to judge the final result, and that certainly no slight was meant by the immediate return of your manuscript, which was explained to your secretary along with the fact that Mr. Foster would see you later and go over the whole matter. The interview we hope for Monday is not to take up more of your time, but to give Mr. Foster the opportunity of telling you how much we appreciate the high scholarship involved in your manuscript, our appreciation of your standing in the field of biblical archeology, and our further appreciation of the great value you have been in reeomending |