Persona

Glanville, Stephen Ranulph Kingdon

1900-1956

British Egyptologist; he was born Westminster, 26 April 1900, son of Stephen James G., deputy editor of the Daily Telegraph, and Elizabeth, daughter of Francis Kingdon; he was educated at Marlborough College and Lincoln College, Oxford where he was a Modern History Scholar, Lit. Hum. and BA, 1922; MA, 1926; he was later Laycock Student of Egyptology, Worcester College, Oxford, 1929¬35; he first visited Egypt as an assistant master in the Egyptian Government Service, 1922, and his enthusiasm for Egyptology having been aroused he joined the EES expedition to Amarna, 1923; he also studied the language under Griffith; he was appointed Assistant in the Dept. of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities, British Museum, 1924; he later became Reader in 1933-5 and then Edwards Professor of Egyptology at University College London; he was elected a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, 1946-54; he excavated at Amarna, 1925, and Armant, 1928, for the EES, was its Hon. Secretary, 1928-31 and 1933-6, and its Chairman of Committee, 1951-6; he served in the RAF (Air Staff) in the Second World War; Herbert Thompson Professor of Egyptology in the University of Cambridge, 1946-56; Hon. Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford; Master of the Grocers' Company, 1953; Provost of King's College, Cambridge, 1954-6, the first non-Cambridge man to be so elected in 500 years; MA, FBA, FSA; he married 1925, Ethel Mary daughter of J. B. Chubb; he contributed to The Mural Painting of El-Amameh, 1929; published Daily Life in Ancient Egypt, 1930; edited Studies Presented to F.Ll. Griffith, 1932; The Egyptians (for children), 1933; Catalogue of Demotic Papyri in the British Museum, i. 1939; ed. The Legacy of Egypt, 1942; The Growth and Nature of Egyptology, 1947; `Notes on a demotic papyrus from Thebes (B.M. 10026)' in Essays and Studies presented to S. A. Cook, 1950; Catalogue of Demotic Papyri in the British Museum II; The Instructions of Onchsheshonklzy, pt. i, 1955; also articles in the JEA, Br. Mus. Quarterly, etc.; he died in Cambridge, 26 April 1956.

• Who Was Who in Egyptology (4th ed. 2012), 214 fig. (portrait).