Griffiths, John Gwyn

• Griffiths, John Gwynedd

British classicist and Egyptologist; he was born at Porth, Glamorgan, 7 Dec. 1911, son of Robert G., Baptist minister, and Jemima Davies; he studied classics at the Universities of Cardiff, Liverpool, and Oxford; he was appointed Assistant Lecturer in Classics, University College of Swansea 1946-47, Lecturer 1947-59, Senior Lecturer 1959¬65, Reader 1965-73, Professor of Classics and Egyptology 1973-79 and then Emeritus; visiting Professor at Cairo Univ 1968; he married 1939 Kathe Bosse; he was also active in the Welsh nationalist movement; a festschrift in his honour Studies in Pharaonic Religions and Society, ed. by A. B. Lloyd, was published in 1992; his principal interest was Ancient Egyptian religion and the Greek sources for it; he published The Conflict of Horus and Seth, 1960, translations of Plutarch's De Iside et Osiride 1970, and Apuleius' The Isis-book, 1975; The Origins of Osiris and his Cult, 1980, The Divine Verdict, 1991; Atlantis and Egypt, 1991; and Triads and Trinity, 1996; he died at Swansea, 15 June 2004.

• Who Was Who in Egyptology (4th ed. 2012), 229 fig. (portrait).