Alan Gardiner

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Sir Alan Henderson Gardiner (born March 29, 1879 in Eltham , † December 19, 1963 in Court Place, Iffley, Oxford ) was one of the most important Egyptologists of the early 20th century.

Live and act

Gardiner was born in Eltham, UK, attended Charterhouse School and went to Paris to study with Gaston Maspero . Dissatisfied with his teaching, he switched to Queen's College in Oxford . He studied there among other things Hebrew and Arabic . After finishing his studies at Oxford in 1901, Gardiner went to Berlin for ten years . There he worked under Professor Adolf Erman on the creation of the dictionary of the Egyptian language . His first major publication also became his most important, Egyptian grammar, which appeared in 1927. In addition to an English-Egyptian and an Egyptian-English dictionary, this grammar also contains the famous Gardiner list of symbols , a compilation of the most important hieroglyphs according to subject groups.

Alan Gardiner was able to devote himself to his research without any other obligations, since his father Henry John Gardiner supported him financially. He was considered to be extremely hard-working, only allowed himself about two weeks of vacation per year and worked seven days a week. Gardiner married Hedwig von Rosen in 1901, with whom he had two sons and a daughter. He was awarded honorary degrees from the universities of Cambridge , Durham , Oxford , and in 1948 he was knighted . Since 1929 he was a member of the British Academy and since 1943 of the American Philosophical Society , in 1957 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Gardiner himself considered his most important discovery to be the discovery of the Protosinaite characters , which he believed to be the forerunners of the Phoenician alphabet .

Fonts

  • The Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage from a Hieratic Papyrus in Leiden. (Pap. Leiden 334 recto). Hinrichs, Leipzig 1909 (Reprint, 2nd reprint: Olms, Hildesheim / Zurich / New York 1990, ISBN 3-487-02129-3 ).
  • Notes on the Story of Sinuhe. Librairie Honoré Champion, Paris 1916.
  • Ancient Egyptian Onomastica. Vols I-III, Oxford University Press, London 1947.
  • Egyptian Grammar. Being an Introduction to the Study of Hieroglyphs. 3rd edition, Oxford University Press, London 1957, OCLC number: 600806502 (1st edition, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1927).
  • The Theory of Proper Names. A Controversial Essay. Oxford University Press, London / New York 1957.
  • Egypt of the Pharaohs: an introduction. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1961, ISBN 0-7567-8664-9 .
  • The Royal Canon of Turin. Griffith Institute at the University Press, Oxford 1997, ISBN 0-900416-48-3 .
  • The Kadesh inscription of Ramesses II. Griffith Institute at the University Press, Oxford 1960,

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Member History: Alan H. Gardiner. American Philosophical Society, accessed August 17, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Gardiner, Alan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gardiner, Alan Henderson (full name); Gardiner, Sir Alan Henderson (full name after 1948)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British Egyptologist
DATE OF BIRTH March 29, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Eltham (London)
DATE OF DEATH December 19, 1963
Place of death Court Place, Iffley, Oxford