Persona

Aldred, Cyril

1914-1991

British Egyptologist and art historian; he was born in London, 19 Feb. 1914, son of Frederick A., a civil servant in the Post Office, and Lilian Ethel Underwood; he studied at the Sloane School, London where his interest in art was fostered; after a year at King's College, London, studying English, he transferred to the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London; BA, 1936; he was appointed Assistant Keeper in the Department of Art and Ethnography in the Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh in charge of the archaeological and ethnographical collections, 1937; he served in the Scottish Education Office and Royal Air Force (Signals) 1942-6; he spent a year as Associate Curator, Dept. of Egyptian Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1955-6; Keeper, Dept. of Art and Archaeology, Royal Scottish Museum, 1961¬74; Member of the Committee of the Egypt Exploration Society, 1959-76; Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 1978; he specialized in the study of Egyptian art and jewellery and was a leading authority on the reign of Akhenaten; he greatly added to the Egyptian collection of the Royal Scottish Museum; his publications included Old Kingdom Art in Ancient Egypt, 1949; Middle Kingdom Art in Ancient Egypt, 1950; New Kingdom Art in Ancient Egypt during the Eighteenth Dynasty 1590-1315 B. C., 1951; all three reissued as The Development of Ancient Egyptian Art, 1952; The Egyptians, 1961, 2nd ed. 1984; Egypt to the End of the Old Kingdom, 1965; Akhenaten, Pharaoh of Egypt - a New Study, 1968; Egypt: The Amama Period and the End of the Eighteenth Dynasty, 1971, later published in Vol. II, Part 2 of The Cambridge Ancient History, 1975; Jewels of the Pharaohs, 1971; Tutankhamun's Egypt, 1972; Akhenaten and Nefertiti, 1973; The Temple of Dendur, 1978; Tutankhamun, Craftsmanship in Gold in the Reign of the King, 1979; Le Monde egyptien. Les Pharaons, with J. Leclant et al, 3 vols., 1979-80; Egyptian Art in the Days of the Pharaohs, 3100-320 B. C, 1980; and Akhenaten: King of Egypt, 1988; he died in Edinburgh, 23 June 1991.

• Who Was Who in Egyptology (4th ed. 2012), 12 fig. (portrait).