Alan Gardiner

Sir Alan Henderson Gardiner (29 March 1879, Eltham  – 19 December 1963, Oxford) was one of the premier English Egyptologists of the early and mid-20th century. Some of his most important publications include a 1959 book on his study of "The Royal Canon of Turin" and his seminal 1961 work Egypt of the Pharaohs, which covered all aspects of Egyptian chronology and history at the time of publication.

Two major contributions to ancient Egyptian philology by Gardiner are his famous 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 1915 Gardiner was also able to crack the so-called Proto-Sinaitic writing system by deciphering the "B'alat inscriptions".

He was educated at Temple Grove School, Charterhouse, and Queens College, Oxford; he was later a student of the famous egyptologist Kurt Heinrich Sethe in Berlin.

Important publications

• The Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage from a Hieratic Papyrus in Leiden (Pap. Leiden 334 recto). Leipzig, 1909 (reprint Hildesheim - Zürich - New York, 1990).
• A Topographical Catalogue of the Private Tombs of Thebes, with Arthur E.P. Weigall, London, Bernard Quaritch, 1913 (read online).
• "New Literary Works from Ancient Egypt", Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 1 (1914), 20-36 and 100-106.
• Notes on the story of Sinuhe, Paris, Librairie Honoré Champion, 1916 (Read online, Kelvin Smith Library).
• "The Tomb of a much-travelled Theban Official", Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 4 (1917), 28-38.
• "On Certain Participial Formations in Egyptian", Rev. ég. N.S. 2/1-2 (1920), 42-55.
• "The Eloquent Peasant", JEA 9 (1923), 5-25.
• Egyptian Grammar: Being an Introduction to the Study of Hieroglyphs, 3rd Ed., pub. Griffith Institute, Oxford, 1957 (1st edition 1927), ISBN 0-900416-35-1
• The Theory of Speech and Language, 1932
• "The Earliest Manuscripts of the Instruction of Amenemmes I", Mélanges Maspero I.2, 479-496. 1934
• Ancient Egyptian Onomastica. Vol. I—III. London, 1947.
• The Ramesseum Papyri. Plates (Oxford 1955)
• The Theory of Proper Names: A Controversial Essay. London; New York: Oxford University Press, 1957.

See also

• Egyptian hieroglyphs
• Pharaoh
• Henry Balfour Gardiner (composer), his brother
• Margaret Gardiner, his daughter
• Rolf Gardiner, his son
• John Eliot Gardiner, his grandson
• Martin Bernal, his grandson
• Gardiner's Sign List

External links

• Works written by or about Alan Henderson Gardiner at Wikisource