Henry Hall (Egyptologist)
Encyclopedia
Dr Henry Reginald Holland Hall MBE
, FBA
, FSA
(30 September 1873 — 13 October 1930) was an English
Egyptologist and historian
. In life, he was normally referred to as Harry Reginald Hall.
, MVO, MA
, a portrait painter and illustrator for The Graphic
newspaper, and his wife Hannah Holland. He went to Merchant Taylors' School, London
and showed an interest in history
and ancient Egypt
from an early age. By the age of 11 he wrote a history of Persia, and by 16 he had gained some knowledge of the ancient Egyptian language
.
Hall studied classics
at St John's College, Oxford
, as well as Egyptian history and language under the tutelage of Egyptologist Francis Llewellyn Griffith
, gaining a BA
in 1895, his MA
in 1897 and later his D.Litt in 1920.
as an assistant to E. A. Wallis Budge
, becoming Assistant Keeper, Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities in 1919. On Budge's retirement in 1924, Hall became Keeper of the Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities, a post he held until his death in 1930.
He worked with Édouard Naville
and Edward R. Ayrton
in the excavations at Deir el-Bahri
, Egypt
, from 1903-07, and also dug at Abydos
with the Egypt Exploration Society
expeditions of 1910 and 1925.
During the First World War he was attached to the military section of the press bureau, and in 1916 moved into Intelligence
and was later attached to the Political Service in Mesopotamia with the rank of captain. He was twice mentioned in dispatches, and was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire
.
Combining in an unusual manner a knowledge of Egyptology and Assyriology in almost equal degrees, he was indefatigable in the service of the joint departments in the British Museum. While in his later years he had not the opportunity to take part in excavating expeditions sent out by the Museum, he was of great assistance in organizing the expeditions of Dr. Campbell Thompson
at Nineveh and Mr. Guy Brunton
in Upper Egypt. He was, despite an initial and boyish brusqueness of manner, a charming colleague and tactful in the division of the spoils of excavation when these had been acquired jointly with other bodies. On the art of Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia he was perhaps the pre-eminent authority, and it was one of his first tasks as Keeper to rearrange many of the galleries so as to stress the artistic and historical side of archaeology and less the predominantly religious emphasis which previously existed. Of the collections in the British Museum Hall published a work on the Coptic and Greek texts of the Christian period, one volume of a catalogue of scarabs, and six volumes on the hieroglyphic texts.
Hall's interests were not confined to Egyptology; after the war he directed the British Museum excavations at Ur
and Tell Ubaid
, in Mesopotamia
. He travelled in Greece and western Asia, and published a variety of works on the history of these regions; he even cultivated an interest in Chinese
antiquities.
and the British Museum Quarterly
. He also contributed chapters to Cambridge Ancient History
as well as articles for Encyclopædia Britannica
and Dictionary of National Biography
.
With later art, especially that of the last four centuries, he was well acquainted, collecting Dutch paintings of ships, and presenting to the National Portrait Gallery in the present year a remarkable collection of political and other portrait sketches made by his father. Among other interests outside his main field, he was devoted to the history of the Army and Navy and his acquaintance with the various types of German military buttons was of unexpected national service in the War.
In 1920 Hall was made honorary D.Litt. at Oxford and an honorary Fellow of his college in 1929. He was a Fellow of the British Academy, chairman of the Palestine Exploration Fund in 1922, and a member of Council of both the Hellenic Society and the Royal Asiatic Society.
On returning from an Egyptological seminar in Brussels
, Hall caught a cold from which he did not recover, dying of pneumonia
in London
on 13 October 1930, at the age of 57. His service was at St. Mary the Virgin, Primrose Hill, and afterwards at Golders Green Crematorium on 15 October.
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
, FBA
British Academy
The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national body for the humanities and the social sciences. Its purpose is to inspire, recognise and support excellence in the humanities and social sciences, throughout the UK and internationally, and to champion their role and value.It receives an annual...
, FSA
Society of Antiquaries of London
The Society of Antiquaries of London is a learned society "charged by its Royal Charter of 1751 with 'the encouragement, advancement and furtherance of the study and knowledge of the antiquities and history of this and other countries'." It is based at Burlington House, Piccadilly, London , and is...
(30 September 1873 — 13 October 1930) was an English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
Egyptologist and historian
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...
. In life, he was normally referred to as Harry Reginald Hall.
Early life
Henry R.H. Hall was the son of Sir Sydney HallSydney Prior Hall
Sir Sydney Prior Hall MVO, MA was a British portrait painter and illustrator and one of the leading reportage artists of the later Victorian period....
, MVO, MA
Master of Arts (postgraduate)
A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...
, a portrait painter and illustrator for The Graphic
The Graphic
The Graphic was a British weekly illustrated newspaper, first published on 4 December 1869 by William Luson Thomas's company Illustrated Newspapers Limited....
newspaper, and his wife Hannah Holland. He went to Merchant Taylors' School, London
Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood
Merchant Taylors' School is a British independent day school for boys, originally located in the City of London. Since 1933 it has been located at Sandy Lodge in the Three Rivers district of Hertfordshire ....
and showed an interest in history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
and ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh...
from an early age. By the age of 11 he wrote a history of Persia, and by 16 he had gained some knowledge of the ancient Egyptian language
Egyptian language
Egyptian is the oldest known indigenous language of Egypt and a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. Written records of the Egyptian language have been dated from about 3400 BC, making it one of the oldest recorded languages known. Egyptian was spoken until the late 17th century AD in the...
.
Hall studied classics
Classics
Classics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...
at St John's College, Oxford
St John's College, Oxford
__FORCETOC__St John's College is a constituent college of the University of Oxford, one of the larger Oxford colleges with approximately 390 undergraduates, 200 postgraduates and over 100 academic staff. It was founded by Sir Thomas White, a merchant, in 1555, whose heart is buried in the chapel of...
, as well as Egyptian history and language under the tutelage of Egyptologist Francis Llewellyn Griffith
Francis Llewellyn Griffith
Francis Llewellyn Griffith was an eminent British Egyptologist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.F. Ll. Griffith was born in Brighton on 27 May 1862 where his father, Rev. Dr. John Griffith, was Principal of Brighton College. After schooling at Brighton College , then privately by his...
, gaining a BA
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
in 1895, his MA
Master of Arts (postgraduate)
A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...
in 1897 and later his D.Litt in 1920.
Career
In 1896 he started work at the British MuseumBritish Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
as an assistant to E. A. Wallis Budge
E. A. Wallis Budge
Sir Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge was an English Egyptologist, Orientalist, and philologist who worked for the British Museum and published numerous works on the ancient Near East.-Earlier life:...
, becoming Assistant Keeper, Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities in 1919. On Budge's retirement in 1924, Hall became Keeper of the Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities, a post he held until his death in 1930.
He worked with Édouard Naville
Édouard Naville
Captaine Henri Édouard Naville was a Swiss egyptologist.He was born in Geneva. He studied in London, Paris and Berlin ....
and Edward R. Ayrton
Edward R. Ayrton
Edward Russell Ayrton was an English Egyptologist and archaeologist.He was the son of William Scrope Ayrton and his wife Ellen Louisa McClatchie, and was born in Wuhu, China, on 17 December 1882...
in the excavations at Deir el-Bahri
Deir el-Bahri
Deir el-Bahari or Deir el-Bahri is a complex of mortuary temples and tombs located on the west bank of the Nile, opposite the city of Luxor, Egypt....
, Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
, from 1903-07, and also dug at Abydos
Abydos, Egypt
Abydos is one of the most ancient cities of Upper Egypt, and also of the eight Upper Nome, of which it was the capital city. It is located about 11 kilometres west of the Nile at latitude 26° 10' N, near the modern Egyptian towns of el-'Araba el Madfuna and al-Balyana...
with the Egypt Exploration Society
Egypt Exploration Society
The Egypt Exploration Society is the foremost learned society in the United Kingdom promoting the field of Egyptology....
expeditions of 1910 and 1925.
During the First World War he was attached to the military section of the press bureau, and in 1916 moved into Intelligence
Intelligence (information gathering)
Intelligence assessment is the development of forecasts of behaviour or recommended courses of action to the leadership of an organization, based on a wide range of available information sources both overt and covert. Assessments are developed in response to requirements declared by the leadership...
and was later attached to the Political Service in Mesopotamia with the rank of captain. He was twice mentioned in dispatches, and was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
.
Combining in an unusual manner a knowledge of Egyptology and Assyriology in almost equal degrees, he was indefatigable in the service of the joint departments in the British Museum. While in his later years he had not the opportunity to take part in excavating expeditions sent out by the Museum, he was of great assistance in organizing the expeditions of Dr. Campbell Thompson
Reginald Campbell Thompson
Reginald Campbell Thompson was a British archaeologist, assyriologist, and cuneiformist. He excavated at Nineveh, Ur, Nebo and Carchemish among many other sites.He was born in Kensington, and educated at Colet Court, St...
at Nineveh and Mr. Guy Brunton
Guy Brunton
Guy Brunton OBE was an English archaeologist and Egyptologist who discovered the Badarian culture. He married Winifred Newberry on 28 April 1906...
in Upper Egypt. He was, despite an initial and boyish brusqueness of manner, a charming colleague and tactful in the division of the spoils of excavation when these had been acquired jointly with other bodies. On the art of Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia he was perhaps the pre-eminent authority, and it was one of his first tasks as Keeper to rearrange many of the galleries so as to stress the artistic and historical side of archaeology and less the predominantly religious emphasis which previously existed. Of the collections in the British Museum Hall published a work on the Coptic and Greek texts of the Christian period, one volume of a catalogue of scarabs, and six volumes on the hieroglyphic texts.
Hall's interests were not confined to Egyptology; after the war he directed the British Museum excavations at Ur
Ur
Ur was an important city-state in ancient Sumer located at the site of modern Tell el-Muqayyar in Iraq's Dhi Qar Governorate...
and Tell Ubaid
Ubaid period
The Ubaid period is a prehistoric period of Mesopotamia. The tell of al-`Ubaid west of nearby Ur in southern Iraq's Dhi Qar Governorate has given its name to the prehistoric Pottery Neolithic to Chalcolithic culture, which represents the earliest settlement on the alluvial plain of southern...
, in Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...
. He travelled in Greece and western Asia, and published a variety of works on the history of these regions; he even cultivated an interest in Chinese
History of China
Chinese civilization originated in various regional centers along both the Yellow River and the Yangtze River valleys in the Neolithic era, but the Yellow River is said to be the Cradle of Chinese Civilization. With thousands of years of continuous history, China is one of the world's oldest...
antiquities.
Personal
He was a forceful speaker with an encyclopaedic knowledge of his subject, and had great success in presenting archaeological discoveries to the general public. He was a frequent contributor of short articles and communications, submitting more than 100 of these to various academic journals, including the Journal of Egyptian ArchaeologyJournal of Egyptian Archaeology
The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology or JEA is a scientific journal containing scholarly articles and reviews of recent books of importance to Egyptology....
and the British Museum Quarterly
British Museum Quarterly
The British Museum Quarterly was a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the British Museum. It described recent acquisitions and research concerning the museum's collections and was published from 1926 to 1973. It is available electronically from JSTOR....
. He also contributed chapters to Cambridge Ancient History
Cambridge Ancient History
The Cambridge Ancient History is a comprehensive ancient history in fourteen volumes, spanning Prehistory to Late Antiquity, published by Cambridge University Press. The first series, of twelve volumes, was planned by J. B. Bury and published between 1924 and 1939. A second series, revising and...
as well as articles for Encyclopædia Britannica
Encyclopædia Britannica
The Encyclopædia Britannica , published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia that is available in print, as a DVD, and on the Internet. It is written and continuously updated by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 expert...
and Dictionary of National Biography
Dictionary of National Biography
The Dictionary of National Biography is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history, published from 1885...
.
With later art, especially that of the last four centuries, he was well acquainted, collecting Dutch paintings of ships, and presenting to the National Portrait Gallery in the present year a remarkable collection of political and other portrait sketches made by his father. Among other interests outside his main field, he was devoted to the history of the Army and Navy and his acquaintance with the various types of German military buttons was of unexpected national service in the War.
In 1920 Hall was made honorary D.Litt. at Oxford and an honorary Fellow of his college in 1929. He was a Fellow of the British Academy, chairman of the Palestine Exploration Fund in 1922, and a member of Council of both the Hellenic Society and the Royal Asiatic Society.
On returning from an Egyptological seminar in Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
, Hall caught a cold from which he did not recover, dying of pneumonia
Pneumonia
Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung—especially affecting the microscopic air sacs —associated with fever, chest symptoms, and a lack of air space on a chest X-ray. Pneumonia is typically caused by an infection but there are a number of other causes...
in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
on 13 October 1930, at the age of 57. His service was at St. Mary the Virgin, Primrose Hill, and afterwards at Golders Green Crematorium on 15 October.
Further reading
- Morris L. Bierbrier, ed., "Who was Who in Egyptology", ISBN 0-85698-125-7, 1995, London, p. 186-7.
Selected bibliography
- Henry R.H. Hall, "The Oldest Civilization of Greece", 1901.
- Henry R.H. Hall, "Coptic and Greek Texts of the Christian Period in the British Museum", 1905, London.
- Henry R.H. Hall and L.W. KingLeonard William KingLeonard William King , M.A., F.S.A., was an English archaeologist and Assyriologist educated at Rugby School and King's College in Cambridge. He collected stone inscriptions widely in the Near East, taught Assyrian and Babylonian archaeology at King's College for a number of years, and published a...
, "Egypt and Western Asia in the light of Recent Discoveries", 1907. - Édouard Naville, Henry R.H. Hall, et al., "The Eleventh Dynasty Temple at Deir el Bahari", 3 vols., 1907-13.
- Henry R.H. Hall, "Hieroglyphic Texts in the British Museum", vols ii-vii, 1912-25, London.
- Henry R.H. Hall, "Ancient History of the Near East from the earliest Times to the Battle of Salamis", 1913.
- Henry R.H. Hall, with Édouard Naville and T.E. Peet, "Cemeteries of Abydos", vol i, 1914.
- Henry R.H. Hall, "Aegean Archaeology", 1915.
- Henry R.H. Hall, C.L. Woolley, et al., "Al 'Ubaid", 1927.
- Henry R.H. Hall, "A General Introductory Guide to the Egyptian Collections in the British Museum", 1930, London.