Sir Alan Henderson Gardiner, (29 March 1879 – 19 December 1963) was an English Egyptologist, linguist, philologist, and independent scholar. He is regarded as one of the premier Egyptologists of the early and mid-20th century.
Personal life
Gardiner was born on 29 March 1879 in Eltham, which was then in the English county of Kent. His father was Henry John Gardiner, a highly successful entrepreneur and businessman who made a considerable fortune in the drapery and wholesale linen trade in Bristol and London. His mother, Clara Elizabeth née Honey, died in his infancy and he and his elder brother, the composer H. Balfour Gardiner, were brought up by their father's housekeeper. Gardiner was educated at Temple Grove School and Charterhouse.
At school he developed an interest in ancient Egypt, and in 1895–96 he studied under the French archaeologist Gaston Maspero in Paris. He then went to Queen's College, Oxford with a scholarship to study Literae humaniores (classics). Having achieved a second in Mods, he changed to Hebrew and Arabic, graduating BA with a first class degree in 1901.
In 1901, after graduating, he married Hedwig von Rosen in Vienna. They had two sons and a daughter, including the rural revivalist campaigner Rolf Gardiner, and Margaret Gardiner, a patron of the arts.
Career
In 1902, Gardiner moved to Berlin, to help gather material for Adolf Erman's projected Egyptian dictionary, serving as a sub-editor from 1906 to 1908. From 1906 to 1912, he was the Laycock Fellow of Egyptology at Worcester College, Oxford. From 1909 he spent two seasons assisting Arthur Weigall in surveying private tombs in the Thebes area. From 1912 to 1914, he was Reader in Egyptology at the University of Manchester. He otherwise avoided formal academic posts and followed his own academic interests, family wealth enabling him to be financially independent.
Gardiner continued to research and publish books and articles until the early 1960s. an honorary DLitt from both Durham (1952) and Cambridge (1956), and election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1957). He was knighted in the 1948 Birthday Honours list.
Works
Gardiner's publications include a 1959 book on his study of the Turin King List, and his 1961 work Egypt of the Pharaohs, which covered all aspects of Egyptian chronology and history at the time of publication.
His works related mainly to ancient languages, with his major contributions to ancient Egyptian philology including three editions of Egyptian Grammar and its correlated list of all the Middle Egyptian hieroglyphs in Gardiner's Sign List. Publishing Egyptian Grammar produced one of the few available hieroglyphic printing fonts.
In 1914, he helped establish the Egypt Exploration Fund's Journal of Egyptian Archaeology which he edited intermittently between 1916 and 1946.