Before he went to Paris in 1911, he had met Alan Gardiner. They remained lifelong friends, and Gardiner was named in his will to co-ordinate the disposition of his professional papers. In 1913 he visited Egypt for the first time, as epigrapher on the staff of Flinders Petrie's excavation at Harageh, near Fayum, working with Reginald Engelbach. The outbreak of World War I prevented him returning for the following season. Returning to England, he enlisted in the Artists Rifles, but was invalided out in 1915.