Persona

Davies, Norman de Garis

1865-1941

British Egyptologist; he was born Broughton, Lancashire 14 Sept. 1865, son of Revd James Dickerson Davies and Emma Mary de Garis; he entered Glasgow University, 1884, with a scholarship from Dr. Williams' Library, London; MA, 1889; BD, 1891; later postgraduate at Marburg Univ.; Hon. member of German Arch. Inst., 1928; Hon. MA, Oxon; he was Congregational Minister at Ashton-under-Lyne where he became acquainted with Miss Kate Bradbury (afterwards Mrs. F. Ll. Griffith) who interested him in Egyptology, which he began to study; he next went to Australia as a Unitarian Minister in Melbourne until 1898, when he joined Petrie at Dendera; during the following years he copied an enormous number of tombs for the Arch. Survey of the EEF: Sheikh Said, 1901, Der el-Gebrawi, 1902, and Amarna, 1903-8; these, together with five more tombs at Thebes were published in 10 vols. of the Arch. Survey memoirs, both text and plates being executed by Davies; the merit of this work was recognized by the award of the Leibniz medal of the Prussian Acad.; he also accompanied Breasted in his expedition to Nubia, and assisted Reisner at the pyramids; he married in 1907, Miss A. M. Cummings, herself an accomplished artist and a trained copyist; he then settled at Thebes and worked for many seasons copying tombs for the MMA, which were published in a series of sumptuous volumes; in addition to these larger works he made many contributions to JEA and other journals. He also published, The Mastaba of Ptahhetep and Akhethetep at Saqqarah, 2 vols. 1900-1; The Rock Tombs of Sheikh Said, 1901; The Rock Tombs of Deir el Gebrawi, 2 vols. 1902; The Rock Tombs of El Amarna, 6 vols. 1903-8; The Temple of Hibis in El Khargeh Oasis, pt. 3, ed. Ludlow Bull and Lindsley F. Hall, 1953; A Corpus of Inscribed Egyptian Funerary Cones, ed. M. F. Laming Macadam, pt. I, 1957. He died at The Copse, Hinksey Hill, Berkshire, 5 Nov. 1941.

• Who Was Who in Egyptology (4th ed. 2012), 144-5 fig. (portrait).