Sent from Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie
3 Nov 1893
Description:

‘Dear Prof. Pearson,

Thanks for your letter about the skeletons; as they do not carry an [illeg.] each in their jaws to pay their transport to the nearest museum, it will be as well if someone will pay the way for them. I saw Prof. Weldon today & he spoke of the variation committee possibly taking up the matter. So far as I can estimate, the cost of material & transport from Koptos to London would be about 1/6 a skeleton, or 6d a skull. If many were brought I should have to employ a carpenter to make the boxes so costing about 1/3rd more.

My part of the business would be extracting the whole complete, marking, & packing.

In view of the quantity of material which you want I propose to bring every skeleton or skull of which the age can be fixed: and to bring the long bones alone of the rest are not attainable. Jewson[?] was in favour of bringing only long bones & skull; but the rest does not take much room, & there must be a host of details to work in the vertebrae & ribs, wherever any one will organise a study of them.

The total number which we might obtain would be possibly 200 skeletons; but more likely 40 or 50, knowing how often they are smashed in the tombs by falls of rock.

If there is a published diagram of the exact positions of standard measurements, I might as well have it; for often a damaged skull is found which does not seem worth transport, but from which some measures could easily be taken on the spot.

One very striking & obvious classification of skulls is the width of the jaw. About 1/3 of the [illeg.] skulls were too wide for the jaws to fit under the temporal arches; but the greater part of the jaws would reach[?] them. I found it because in my skullery I used to hang up the skulls on nails all round the walls & hitch the jaws across the face.

Yours sincerely,

W.M. Flinders Petrie.’