Henry Hall (Egyptologist)

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For other people of this name see Henry Hall (disambiguation).

Dr Henry Reginald Holland Hall MBE, FBA, FSA (30th September 1873 — 13th October 1930) was an English Egyptologist and historian.

Henry R.H. Hall was the son of Sydney Hall, MVO, MA, a portrait painter and illustrator for The Graphic newspaper, and his wife Hannah Holland. He went to Merchant Taylors' School 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.

In 1896 he started work at the British Museum 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. He was mentioned in dispatches, and was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire.

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.

He was a forceful speaker with an encyclopeadic 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 Archaeology and the British Museum Quarterly. He also contributed chapters to Cambridge Ancient History as well as articles for Encyclopædia Britannica.

On returning from an Egyptological seminar in Brussels, Hall caught a cold from which he did not recover, dying of pneumonia in London on 13th October, 1930, at the age of 57.

[edit] Further reading

• Morris L. Bierbrier, ed., "Who was Who in Egyptology", ISBN 0-85698-125-7, 1995, London, p. 186-7.

[edit] 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. King, "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.