Alexander Stuart Murray, FBA (8 January 1841March 1904) was a Scottish archaeologist. He was known for excavations on Cyprus.
Life
Murray was born at Arbroath, and educated there, at the Royal High School, Edinburgh and at the Universities of Edinburgh and Berlin. In 1867 he entered the British Museum as an assistant in the department of Greek and Roman antiquities under Sir Charles Newton, whom he succeeded in 1886. His younger brother, George Robert Milne Murray (1858–1911), was made keeper of the botanical department in 1895, a rare instance of two brothers becoming heads of departments at the museum.
In 1873 Murray published a Manual of Mythology, and in the following year contributed to the Contemporary Review two articles—one on the Homeric question—which led to a friendship with Mr Gladstone, the other on Greek painters. In 1874 he also published the popular work Who's Who in Mythology. In 1880-1883 he brought out his History of Greek Sculpture: From the Earliest Times Down to the Age of Pheidias, which at once became a standard work. In 1886, he was selected by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland to deliver the next year's Rhind lectures on archaeology, out of which grew his Handbook of Greek Archaeology (1892).
- Two Vases from Cyprus (1887)
- Excavations in Cyprus: bequest of Miss E. T. Turner to the British Museum (1900)