File TAA iii.29 - Publication: Davies, N. de G. and A. Gardiner Tutankhamun’s painted box

British Egyptologist. Born, Eltham 1879. Died, Oxford 1963. Educated at Charterhouse, then studied Classics, Hebrew and Arabic at The Queen's College, Oxford. Worked with A. Erman on the preparation of material for the Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache and was sub-editor 1906-8. Laycock Studentship, Worcester College, Oxford, 1906-12. Edited many Egyptological publications, including the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology. Published extensively in the field of Egyptology. Honorary Secretary of the Egypt Exploration Society, 1917-20, Vice President and then President, 1959-63. He was awarded many distinctions during his career. Specialized in hieratic texts on papyri and ostraca. Gardiner published the 1st edition of his Egyptian Grammar in 1927, which is still one of the essential learning aids for Middle Egyptian. Gardiner was also a member of the Tutankhamun excavation team, recording inscriptions from objects found in the tomb during the first few seasons.

British artist and copyist; born Salonika, 6 Jan. 1881, daughter of Cecil J. Cummings and Sarah Tannoch; she was trained at the Slade School of Art and the Royal College of Art under Walter Crane; her interest in Egypt was aroused when she visited Alexandria in 1906, and she married Norman de G. Davies the following year, with whom she was to record a great many Theban tombs; an excellent artist she went to great pains to reproduce colours as exactly as possible, and achieved remarkable results in the days before colour photography; she used egg tempera when making copies of scenes instead of merely watercolours; in all she worked at Thebes for over thirty years, 1908-39; three of the five vols. of The Theban Tombs Series were entirely her work, the others had drawings by her husband as well, while Gardiner edited the series; Nina Davies also copied at Amarna, 1925-6, and at Beni Hasan, 1931-2; in 1923 Gardiner exhibited a collection of her copies at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and this was followed by the publication of two folio vols. of Ancient Egyptian Paintings, 1936; in 1954 a miniature Penguin edition of some of these was illustrated with small reproductions and had a text by the artist; in 1958 she published a series of paintings from originals in the British Museum and the Bankes Collection; she, with her husband, also helped Gardiner in selecting and making drawings of good representative hieroglyphs of the XVIIIth Dynasty to use in his hieroglyphic font, and published Picture Writing in Ancient Egypt, 1958; she contributed a number of articles to the JEA and left two of her copies to the Egyptian Department of the British Museum and other copies together with a shabti figure to the Ashmolean Museum; her Egyptological books were bequeathed to the Griffith Institute and to the Pitt-Rivers Museum, Oxford; she died in Hinksey Hill, Berkshire (now Oxfordshire), 21 April 1965.