Persona

Fairman, Herbert Walter

1907-1982

British Egyptologist; he was born at Clare, Suffolk 9 March 1907, son of Revd Walter Trotter F., a Baptist missionary in Egypt, and Mary Amelia Prior; he was educated at Bethany School, Goudhurst, Kent and from 1926 at the Institute of Archaeology, Liverpool studying under Peet and Garstang; Certificate in Archaeology (Egyptology) 1929; he took part in the excavations at Armant, 1929-31; assistant field director under Pendlebury at Amarna, 1931-6; field director for the EES at Sesebi and Amara West, 1936-9, 1947-8; he drew several of the text plates for Peet's Great Tomb Robberies and the plates for Gardiner's editions of the Chester Beatty papyri and the Late Egyptian Miscellanies; he also collaborated with Blackman on the reading of Ptolemaic texts; during World War II he was attached to the British Embassy in Cairo, 1940-7; he was appointed Brunner Professor of Egyptology at the University of Liverpool, 1948-74 and Special Lecturer in Egyptology at the University of Manchester, 1948-69; Dean of the Faculty of Arts, 1956-8; Emeritus Professor, 1974-82; he devoted himself to teaching during his university career and hence his publications are few; apart from articles and chapters in the excavation reports of Armant and Amarna, he edited The City of Akhenaten III, 1950 and wrote The Triumph of Horus, 1974; he died in Liverpool, 16 November 1982.

• Who Was Who in Egyptology (5th ed. 2019), 157 fig. (portrait).