Naturally, this made me want to learn more about the museum (not to mention the auction results). In all my many visits to London, which began years ago during a summer job at an archaeological dig in Buckinghamshire, I’ve never visited the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology. I’ve often walked through the neighborhood, and I once stayed at a hotel just a block away, but I somehow missed this apparently splendid showcase of antiquities.

Tucked into the campus of University College London, the Petrie houses one of the most eclectic collections in its field. An estimated 80,000 artifacts, spanning the millennia from prehistory to the Islamic period, include early copper tools and garments of linen, sculpture, ancient Egypt’s only known veterinary text, wills recorded for posterity on papyrus, cosmetic equipment, musical instruments, walking sticks, buttons and belts, an array of slippers and sandals, and three woolen socks dating from the fourth or fifth century.

Founded for the use of scholars in 1892, the museum began with 46 boxes of artifacts from the estate of legendary traveler and Egyptologist Amelia Edwards. Later donations—especially from the prodigious excavations of W. Flinders Petrie, for whom the museum is named—added large groups of things like pottery and jewelry and amulets that show how life in Egypt changed over time.

Today, the public is welcome to visit the Petrie, located just a short stroll from one of the city’s great repositories of culture, the British Museum. Also, its whole collection can be explored online.

Volunteers known as the Friends of the Petrie Museum arrange lectures, school visits, and trips. They also plan fund-raisers to help pay for improved displays and the conservation of fragile antiquities—a painted coffin base, a bead-net dress, wax mummy portraits, masks of papier-mâché-like cartonnage.

Five years ago the Friends started an annual auction of donated books, with bidding online as well as in person. The inaugural volumes, from a retired professor of Egyptology who was paring down his library, brought in about $9,000.

This past year, books came from the estate of the founding member of the Friends. Several weeks before the live auction in December, Jan Picton, the current secretary and auctioneer, circulated the list of titles among several hundred Friends and interested groups on the Internet.

I picked up the list from a blog. Since I often write about ancient Egypt for National Geographic, I downloaded it for future reference. And then ignored it for days as deadlines pressed in.

During an odd free moment, I finally had a look. At 214 entries, it was daunting. But I thought there might be something I should try to get for my own library, so I scrolled through. I saw a lot of books that I’d love to have, some so rare I knew I couldn’t even think about buying them. Then, far down the list, I came to the issue of National Geographic with my own story.

I didn’t end up bidding on anything, but what about the fate of the magazine?

On the night of the live auction, Jan told me later, about 50 people sipped wine as they crowded between the pottery cases in the museum. Jan juggled their bids along with the ones that had come in by e-mail. When #144 came up, three people bid against each other, pushing the price to ten pounds—about $16. “I thought it would only fetch a pound or two, to be honest,” Jan told me later. “I was quite chuffed.”

The entire lot of books took about two hours to auction. One set alone—three volumes by Pierre Montet chronicling his excavations at Tanis between 1921 and 1951—went for about $1,800. “It’s about having more than one person desperate for those books,” Jan said. “The person who succeeded would have paid twice that.” People got caught up in the excitement of the event, but they also knew it was for a good cause, so they didn’t hold back. The grand total, more than $18,000, will be put toward conserving and remounting about 150 stone inscriptions.

How long will Jan keep this going? “Until I run out of books,” she said. “And there’s no sign of that at the moment.”

The list of volumes for the next auction should circulate sometime this fall. They’re already accounted for—another bequest from an estate. I’ll be sure to have an early look this time. And maybe even bid on a volume or two.

Subscribe to the next book list by emailing petriebooks@ijnet.demon.co.uk with "subscribe" in the message header. —A. R. Williams

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