wrote on January 2, 2012
at
3:34 pm
It was delightful to come across information about Joan Grant on the Internet quite by chance when I was looking for something else. (Is anything really “by chance”?) I am the niece of Harold Douglas Hill who was an architect / archaeologist working in the Middle East with the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago in the 1920s and 1930s. (I was born while he was on “The Dig”.) He knew Joan Grant at the time. Sadly, Uncle Harold contracted tuberculosis while he was overseas and died in the early 1940s, just a few years after he came home. I inherited his copy of “Winged Pharoah” (Arthur Barker Ltd., Fifth Printing … December 1937) inscribed “To Hal with love from Joan Leslie”. I read it for the first time when I was a very young girl. Something about the book, particularly Joan’s description of Time as a circle (Part III – 16. “The Wheel of Time”, pages 163-5), “rang true” and had a profound effect on me even at that very young age. I felt as though I had found a kindred soul. Every now and then, particularly when my spirit needs I lift, I get out the book and read it again. Thank you, Sekhet-a-ra! I look forward to spending time with you again.