Persona

Faulkner, Raymond Oliver

1894-1982

British Egyptologist; he was born in Shoreham, Sussex, 26 Dec. 1894, son of Frederick Arthur F., a bank clerk, and Matilda Elizabeth Wheeler; he entered the Civil Service in 1912; he served briefly in World War I before being invalided out and rejoined the Civil Service in 1916; his interest in Egyptology led him in 1918 to study hieroglyphs in his spare time at University College London under Margaret Murray; in 1926 he became a fill-time assistant to (Sir) Alan Gardiner; he collaborated with Gardiner on his major publications in the autography of the hieroglyphic texts, the commentaries, and the indexes notably for The Wilbour Papyrus and Ancient Egyptian Onomastica; he received his training in Egyptian philology from Gardiner who encouraged his independent publications; he became an assistant in language teaching at University College, London 1951; lecturer in Egyptian language 1954-67; FSA 1950; DLitt from London University 1960; editor of JEA 1946-59; his main area of interest was Egyptian philology in which he made major contributions with his Middle Egyptian dictionary and translations of many important texts; his numerous publications include The Plural and Dual in Old Egyptian, 1929; The Papyrus Bremner-Rhind, 1933; A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, 1962, 2nd ed. 1972; Egypt: From the Inception of the Nineteenth Dynasty to the Death of Ramesses III, 1966 for the Cambridge Ancient History; The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, 1969; Catalogue of Egyptian Antiquities in the British Museum,II Wooden Model Boats, 1972, with S. Glanville; The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts, 3 vols. 1972-8; The Literature of Ancient Egypt, 1973,with E. Wente, and W. K. Simpson; The Book of the Dead, 1972; he also wrote many articles and reviews; he died in Ipswich, Suffolk, 3 March 1982.

• Who Was Who in Egyptology (4th ed. 2012), 187-8 fig. (portrait).