EGYPT EXPLORATION FUND

(aka Egypt Exploration Society)

   This organization was founded in London in 1882 to sponsor excavations in Egypt, largely through the efforts of novelist Amelia Edwards. The name was changed from Egypt Exploration Fund to Egypt Exploration Society in 1919. It has been responsible for archaeological work at many sites in Egypt, notably at Tanis and Bubastis in the Delta, Abydos, Amarna, Deir el-Bahri, Memphis, Saqqara, and Buhen and Qasr Ibrim in Nubia. Among the archaeologists employed by the society have been Flinders Petrie and Howard Carter. The society has also encouraged the copying of tomb and temple reliefs and inscriptions, and from 1895–1907 it sponsored the work of Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt in collecting Graeco-Roman papyri, notably at Oxyrhynchus, which are still in the course of publication. In the past, the society received from the Egyptian authorities a division of the antiquities found during its excavations, which were then distributed to various museums throughout the world.