First edition, first impression. Presentation copy, inscribed by Forster "AJB, from the author" on the front free endpaper, with the ownership inscription of the recipient, A. J. Butler, to the front board. This is Oxford historian Alfred Joshua Butler (1850-1936), whose work The Arab Conquest of Egypt (1902) Forster cites as his main source for the period, and describes it as "a monograph of the highest merit, brilliantly written, and practically reconstructing the episode" (p. iii). He also acknowledges Butler's Ancient Coptic Churches (1884) as his source for the passage on the monasteries of Natrun, and reproduces two of his plans at pages 202 and 203. Butler appears to have then used the guide for his own purposes, the section on the Greco-Roman Museum (pp. 107-21), bearing his inked underlinings and marginal summaries of the exhibits described by Forster. Copies of the first edition are rare, as most of the print run was destroyed by fire.
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