Percy E. Newberry

He was born in Islington, London, 23 April 1869, son of Henry James N., warehouseman, and Caroline Wyatt, and was educated at King’s College School and King’s College, London, MA; OBE. He studied Botany and Archaeology, and was mentored in Egyptology by Reginald S. Poole (1832–1895) of the British Museum and by Francis L. Griffith (1862–1934). He began his career at the Egypt Exploration Fund, and from 1890 to 1894 headed an expedition to investigate the tombs of Middle Kingdom nomarchs at Beni Hasan and El Bersha. In 1893–1894, he published a two-volume monograph Beni Hasan which remains a definitive account of the tombs there. He then operated as a freelance excavator from 1895–1901, undertaking a survey of the Necropolis at Thebes. In 1902 he worked on the Catalogue Général of the Egyptian Antiquities at the Cairo Museum.

From 1906 until 1919 he was Brunner Professor of Egyptology at the University of Liverpool. In 1919 he was appointed OBE. In 1923 he served as President of the Anthropological Section of the British Association, and from 1926 to 1927 was Vice-President of the Royal Anthropological Institute. In 1929 he accepted the chair of Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology at the University of Egypt, Cairo, a post he held until 1933.

He published extensively (see Magee, Diana, The Egyptological Bibliography of Percy Edward Newberry (1869–1949), in the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Volume 76, 1990). Notable publications include several volumes in the Archaeological Survey of Egypt series, two volumes in the Catalogue Général of Egyptian Antiquities at the Cairo Museum, and Scarabs: an introduction to the Study of Egyptian Seals and Signet Rings (1906).

On 12 February 1907 he married Essie W. Johnston (1878–1953). Although largely undocumented, in 1894 he had married Helena Aders (1871–1953), whom he divorced in 1905. He died at his home in Godalming, 7 August 1949.