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Show 2J ,'S/ll Professor Aziz S. Atiya, Faculty of Arts, Farouk I University, Alexandria, April 5, 1950. Dear Dr. Luther Evans, Thank you so much for your gratifying letter and for your kind appreciation of the e-Torts exerted at this end on behalf of the Mt. Sinai Expedition. I must admit that I have not had a royal road, and, curie usly enough, some of cur American members have done much to complicate mattars at times. Nevertheless, the Expedition is fulfilling its duty to our entire satisfaction ; and may be later on I can' speak to you on some members of its personnel. For the time being, I overlook everything except the interest of the work we have set out to achieve. Before our return to the valley for a short Easter vacation, we completed the microfilming of over 700 volumes amounting to about 175.000 folios. These include a wide selection of Greek A"SS. and the whole set of codices in Georgian and Armenian. In addition, 1000 Arabic firmans of considerable length (sometimes reaching 25 metres inscribed recto and verso) have been microfilmed j and the third camera you sent us came very handy for this purpose. All my Egyptian assistants have been admirable in executing their duties. After Easter, I Intend to take with me two tureologists for dealing with the collection of Turkish firmans ; and I shall attack the Arabic , set of 700 codices. 1 hope that the work will be completed about the end of May. It may be of interest to you to know that I have made a fer outstanding diseoy- ^eries including a suplementary set of Arabic finnans and a unicue ancient Georgian-. Codex of considerable size on pap|rrus » the first of its kind in the world. I am handing it over to Oaritte to study, and, who knows, I may stumble again on some other treasures in untrodden corners of the Convent. This is made possible by my friendly relations with the Archbishop and the monks, and .this means" a great deal' in getting things done. My friends in the American Embassy in Cairo have been following with great interest our activities in the Expedition. According to my explanations particularly to regard to the Arabic firmans, they realised that the editing of the catalogue material would have to be continued at a later stage possibly in the Library of Congress. The information microfilmed in the tergets with every firman has been planned on the basis of sheer identification of every document, but it remains insufficient for catalogue purposes. The limitation of time at our disposal together with the enormous difficulties of each individual document in matters of dating paleography and description have forced us to defer this task j and the Embassy seens to have taken the liberty of placing my name on a panel to be sant to the Department of State for a travel grant of 2000 dollars in order to make it possible for the Library to consider the possibility of an invitation of a few months1 duration, of course it will be necessary to supplement this grant with sufficient funds from other sources such as a visiting professorship in one of the universities within reach of Washington, i.e. Princeton, the Johns Hopkins, etc. or fall back on the funds of the Library if you deem the project worthy of your attention. All I should like to know is whether the Embassy view is feasible from the Library standpoint in order to arrange my time-table for next, year accordingly, especially as I have an invitation to a visiting professorship in Switzerland for one term. |
