Battiscombe Gunn
Encyclopedia
Battiscombe "Jack" George Gunn (30 June 1883–27 February 1950) was an English
Egyptologist
and philologist. He published his first translation from Egyptian in 1906. He translated inscriptions for many important excavations and sites, including Fayum, Saqqara
, Amarna
, Giza and Luxor
(including Tutankhamun
). He was curator at the Egyptian Museum
in Cairo
and at the University Museum
at the University of Pennsylvania
in Philadelphia. In 1934 he was appointed Professor of Egyptology at the University of Oxford
, a chair he held until his death in 1950.
, the son of George Gunn, a member of the London Stock Exchange
, and Julia Alice Philp. His paternal grandprents were Theophilus Miller Gunn FRCS, a prominent London surgeon originally from Chard
, and Mary Dolly Battiscombe, from Bridport
. Theophilus's father was John Gunn, a non-conformist
preacher originally from Wick
in Scotland, but who spent most of his career in Chard. Both sides of the family were non-conformist. His unusual first name came from his grandmother's maiden name.
He was educated at Bedales School
, Westminster School
and Allhallows School, Honiton
. These public schools were more liberal than the conventional Victorian Public Schools, and provided an open-minded environment. Bedales, in those days, attracted nonconformists, agnostics and liberal Jews. It had connections to Fabian intellectual circles, and to the Wedgewoods, Darwins, Huxleys and Trevelyans. At the age of 14, while still in school, he began to read hieroglyphs
. He then went to a tutor in Wiesbaden, but returned to London at the age of 18, due to a change in family finances.
His father expected Jack to follow him to a career in the City
, but he found he hated it. He tried banking, engineering
, but they did not suit him. From 1908 to 1911 he was the private secretary to Pinero
, which suited him better. In 1911, he moved to Paris where he worked as a journalist
for the Continental Daily Mail.
He demonstrated a proficiency in languages from an early age, and began working with Egyptian hieroglyphs while still in school. While often described as entirely self taught, the Griffith Institute Archives say that he studied hieroglyphs at University College, London, as a student of Margaret Murray
.
. In 1906 his translation of "The Instruction of Ptah-Hotep
and The Instruction of Ke'Gemni
" (from the Prisse Papyrus
in Paris) was published as part of the "Wisdom of the East" series of wisdom literature
. He later considered the translation to be premature and said: "I entirely repudiate my translation of the Prisse Papyrus, so far as one can repudiate what is in print." But it was considered a considerable improvement over previous translations, and is still in print.
He also seems to have been involved with the leaders of both factions of the occult
community in London at the time: Arthur Edward Waite
of the magical order, the Golden Dawn
, and Aleister Crowley
, who created his own order, A∴A∴ after he left the Golden Dawn. R. A. Gilbert's biography of Waite describes Gunn as "an artist, an Egyptologist and an oriental linguist", and says that, in 1910, he "argued at great length over the correct transliteration of Hebrew terms used in the Grade rituals." Crowley based his new religion, Thelema
, on the translation of Stele of Ankh-ef-en-Khonsu, also referred to as the "Stele of Revealing". He originally (1904) had it translated by the assistant curator of the Boulaq Museum in Cairo, under the supervision of the Egyptologist Bugsch Bet. In 1912, he arranged for another translation, by Gunn and Gardiner.
Crowley's periodical, The Equinox
, contained a series of parodies aimed at Waite. In two of these, Battiscombe Gunn appeared as a minor character. In Volume 1, number 8 (Sept. 1912), Gunn appears in "Waite's Wet", a fictitious account of Waite's return to Crowley's group: "Waite's photograph, frock-coat and all, was carried in its red plush frame shoulder high by Mr. Battiscombe Gunn...". In Volume 1, number 10 (Sept 1913), Gunn appears in "Dead Weght" a false description of Waite's death (he actually lived until the 1940s): "Mr. Battiscombe Gunn was rapidly revising the funeral arrangements of the dying saint, which he proposed to found on some unedited documents of the Second Dynasty
, which showed conclusively that the sacred lotus was in reality a corset, and the Weapon of Men Thu a button-hook."
Another one-time member of the Golden Dawn with whom he had a documented connection was Allan Bennett
. Clifford Bax
, in his memoir "Some I Knew Well", describes Gunn arranging a meeting with Bennett. Bax was also a friend of Gunn's first wife, Meena, and her son Patrick, later Spike, Hughes
.
By the 1930s, however, Gunn was highly antagonistic to Frederic H. Wood, who claimed that a long dead Egyptian princess spoke, in ancient Egyptian, through "Rosemary". This form of "speaking in tongues" is known as xenoglossy
. Rosemary's utterances were recorded phonetically and an Egyptologist, Mr. Hulme, claimed that Rosemary's speech conformed to the ancient Egyptian tongue, and could be translated into English. In the June 1937, issue of the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology
, Gunn claimed that Hulme had manipulated the transcriptions to fit his own expectations of what he imagined ancient Egyptian to sound like. A later examination by John D. Ray
(the current Sir Herbert Thompson Professor of Egyptology at the University of Cambridge) confirmed "there could be no mistaking Hulme's incompetence". Furthermore, both Gunn and Ray pointed out that Rosemary's visions of camels as domestic transport were inconsistent, as camels were not used for transport in 18th Dynasty Egypt
. Wood's book on the subject, Egyptian Miracle, makes repeated derogatory references to Gunn, including "Also, the passing of our opponent Battiscombe Gunn, in 1950, can be recorded with the comment, De mortuis nil nisi bonum."
. They remained life-long friends, and Gardiner was named in his will to coordinate the disposition of his professional papers. In 1913 visited Egypt for the first time, as epigrapher
on the staff of Flinders Petrie's excavation at Harageh, near Fayum, working with Reginald Engelbach. The outreak of World War I
prevented him returning for the following season. Returning to England, he enlisted in the Artists Rifles, but was invalided out in 1915.
From 1915 to 1920 he worked as an assistant to Gardiner, primarily in the lexicographical work which lead to the 1947 publication of Ancient Egyptian Onomastica. Of this period, Gardiner said: "He was a real Bohemian and much of his research was carried on in his own lodgings at dead of night." A series of articles written while working with Gardiner led to the publication, in 1924, of his major publication, Studies in Egyptian Syntax. In this book, he identified the unusual syntactical relationship between negation and tense, now known as Gunn's Rule. Gunn's Rule still appears in modern textbooks.
In the winter of 1921 to 1922 he was a member of the team led by Thomas Eric Peet
and Leonard Woolley
excavating at Amarna
. He was then appointed (1922 to 1928) to the staff of the Service des Antiquities of the Egyptian government. During this time he worked with Cecil Firth
in the investigations of the pyramid of Teti
. He assisted in the translation of ostraca from the tomb of Tutankhamun
. Using field glasses, he was able to read the name Sneferu
in the tomb which was eventually shown to be the tomb of Hetepheres I
.
He became assistant conservator of the Egyptian Museum
in Cairo
in 1928, the year in which his son, J. B. Gunn was born. During the time he lived in Maadi
, outside Cairo, he experimented with the manufacture of papyrus
, growing the plant in his garden. He beat the sliced papyrus stalks between two layers of linen, and produced successful examples of papyrus, one of which was exhibited in the Egyptian Museum
in Cairo.
He moved to the University Museum
at the University of Pennsylvania
in Philadelphia in 1931 as curator of the Egyptian section. In 1934 he was given an honorary M.A. at Oxford, so he could be appointed Professor of Egyptology at the University of Oxford
, a chair he held until his death. He was made a Fellow of Queen's College
, and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy
in 1943.
While at Oxford, he devoted himself to his pupils and his classes, at the expense of his own research. He was Editor of the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology
form 1934 to 1939, and was in active correspondence with a large number of other Egyptologists, all over the world. During World War II
several of his students (including Alec Dakin) worked on code breaking at Bletchley Park
. Other students include Ricardo Caminos
, Warren Royal Dawson
, Peter Lewis Shinnie, Paul E. Kahle
and T. G. H. James
.
Agatha Christie's
1944 detective novel Death Comes as the End
, set in Thebes
in the Middle Kingdom
, is based on a series of letters that he translated.
For "Land of Enchanters - Egyptian Short Stories from the Earliest Times to the Present Day", published in 1947, he provided the English translation of both the Ancient Egyptian and Coptic
stories. A revised edition was published in 2002.
. She was born Lillian Meacham, in Maidstone, Kent, but had spent most of her teeange years in Cape Town, South Africa, where her father, C.S. Meacham, was brewery manager and corporate chemist for Olsson's Brewery. She was given the nickname Meena by Orage
, who said that her childhood blond plaits reminded him of Princess Wilhelmina
. In her late teens, she returned to London to study piano at the Royal Academy of Music
. Her younger sister was Gwendoline Meacham, who became a Scots Nationalist, and changed her name to Wendy Wood
.
In addition to playing piano, for which she won 2 gold medals and then stopped playing, she became part of the circle around G. B. Shaw and H. G. Wells
. She was a member of the Fabian Society
and attended Theosophy
lectures. In 1907, not long before her marriage to Hughes, she had a brief affair with the sculptor, printmaker and typographer Eric Gill
, with whom both she and Jack were life-long friends. Jack rented a cottage in Ditchling, where Gill was located, in the summer of 1919, and Jack, Meena and Pat all stayed there.
In 1915, in the midst of World War I, Meena was in Florence, Italy, visiting another suitor, a "rich American". Jack escorted her seven year old son, Patrick Hughes (later Spike Hughes
) from London to Florence, and then returned. In his autobiography, "Opening Bars", Pat describes his part in her decision to return to England and marry Jack. Her divorce from Herbert Hughes, however, was not finalized until 1922.
During the early 1920s, while Jack was working in Egypt during the season, Meena spent quite a lot of time in central Europe, and Jack spent his summers there. In 1924, Meena studied psychoanalysis with Sigmund Freud
in Vienna, and Sándor Ferenczi
in Budapest. During this time, Jack was asked to visit Freud and look at his Egyptian antiquities. He never said anything to Freud, but he was convinced that nearly all of them were fakes. Meena was a practicing psychoanalyst for the following 45 years, into her 80s. While Jack was Professor of Egyptology at Oxford, Meena maintained a psychoanalytical practice on Harley Street
in London. After World War II she worked closely with Anna Freud
, and in the 1960s she practiced in the U.S.
After she completed her psychoanalytic training, Meena accompanied Jack while he was working in Egypt, and in 1928, their son J. B. Gunn, known as Iain, (later a physicist) was born in Cairo.
In 1940, Meena and Jack were divorced, as Meena wanted to marry Alex Grey-Clarke, a young Harley Street doctor.
In 1948 Jack married Constance Rogers, a librarian at the Ashmolean Museum
.
"Jack's death, early in 1950, was preceded by some characteristic last words. He sent for his son Iain and Iain's fiancee, and as he lay on his death-bed, delivered a wise and paternal little speech on the advantages of marriage, and gave the two youngsters his blessing. Then he turned to his wife and said: "I shall look a bloody fool if I don't die after that, won't I?", and died within a few moments."
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
Egyptology
Egyptology is the study of ancient Egyptian history, language, literature, religion, and art from the 5th millennium BC until the end of its native religious practices in the AD 4th century. A practitioner of the discipline is an “Egyptologist”...
and philologist. He published his first translation from Egyptian in 1906. He translated inscriptions for many important excavations and sites, including Fayum, Saqqara
Saqqara
Saqqara is a vast, ancient burial ground in Egypt, serving as the necropolis for the Ancient Egyptian capital, Memphis. Saqqara features numerous pyramids, including the world famous Step pyramid of Djoser, sometimes referred to as the Step Tomb due to its rectangular base, as well as a number of...
, Amarna
Amarna
Amarna is an extensive Egyptian archaeological site that represents the remains of the capital city newly–established and built by the Pharaoh Akhenaten of the late Eighteenth Dynasty , and abandoned shortly afterwards...
, Giza and Luxor
Luxor
Luxor is a city in Upper Egypt and the capital of Luxor Governorate. The population numbers 487,896 , with an area of approximately . As the site of the Ancient Egyptian city of Thebes, Luxor has frequently been characterized as the "world's greatest open air museum", as the ruins of the temple...
(including Tutankhamun
Tutankhamun
Tutankhamun , Egyptian , ; approx. 1341 BC – 1323 BC) was an Egyptian pharaoh of the 18th dynasty , during the period of Egyptian history known as the New Kingdom...
). He was curator at the Egyptian Museum
Egyptian Museum
The Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, known commonly as the Egyptian Museum, in Cairo, Egypt, is home to an extensive collection of ancient Egyptian antiquities. It has 120,000 items, with a representative amount on display, the remainder in storerooms....
in Cairo
Cairo
Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...
and at the University Museum
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, commonly called The Penn Museum, is an archaeology and anthropology museum that is part of the University of Pennsylvania in the University City neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.-History:An internationally renowned...
at the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
in Philadelphia. In 1934 he was appointed Professor of Egyptology at the University of Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
, a chair he held until his death in 1950.
Early life and background
Gunn was born in LondonLondon
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...
, the son of George Gunn, a member of the London Stock Exchange
London Stock Exchange
The London Stock Exchange is a stock exchange located in the City of London within the United Kingdom. , the Exchange had a market capitalisation of US$3.7495 trillion, making it the fourth-largest stock exchange in the world by this measurement...
, and Julia Alice Philp. His paternal grandprents were Theophilus Miller Gunn FRCS, a prominent London surgeon originally from Chard
Chard
Chard , is a leafy green vegetable often used in Mediterranean cooking. While the leaves are always green, chard stalks vary in color. Chard has been bred to have highly nutrious leaves at the expense of the root...
, and Mary Dolly Battiscombe, from Bridport
Bridport
Bridport is a market town in Dorset, England. Located near the coast at the western end of Chesil Beach at the confluence of the River Brit and its Asker and Simene tributaries, it originally thrived as a fishing port and rope-making centre...
. Theophilus's father was John Gunn, a non-conformist
Nonconformism
Nonconformity is the refusal to "conform" to, or follow, the governance and usages of the Church of England by the Protestant Christians of England and Wales.- Origins and use:...
preacher originally from Wick
Wick
Wick may refer to:* David Wicks, fictional character from a British soap opera. Not to be confused with David Wicks, American comedian/actor.* Candle wick, the cord used in a candle or oil lamp...
in Scotland, but who spent most of his career in Chard. Both sides of the family were non-conformist. His unusual first name came from his grandmother's maiden name.
He was educated at Bedales School
Bedales School
Bedales School is a co-educational independent school situated in Hampshire, in the south east of England. Founded in 1893 by John Haden Badley in reaction to the limitations of conventional Victorian schools, today the school is one of the most expensive in the UK, charging £9,985 per term for a...
, Westminster School
Westminster School
The Royal College of St. Peter in Westminster, almost always known as Westminster School, is one of Britain's leading independent schools, with the highest Oxford and Cambridge acceptance rate of any secondary school or college in Britain...
and Allhallows School, Honiton
Allhallows College
Allhallows College, previously known as Allhallows School, was an independent boys 'public school' in Devon, England, predominantly boarding.-History:...
. These public schools were more liberal than the conventional Victorian Public Schools, and provided an open-minded environment. Bedales, in those days, attracted nonconformists, agnostics and liberal Jews. It had connections to Fabian intellectual circles, and to the Wedgewoods, Darwins, Huxleys and Trevelyans. At the age of 14, while still in school, he began to read hieroglyphs
Hieroglyphs
Hieroglyph or hieroglyphics may refer to:*Anatolian hieroglyphs*Chinese character*Cretan hieroglyphs*Cursive hieroglyphs*Dongba script*Egyptian hieroglyphs*Hieroglyphic Luwian*Mayan hieroglyphs...
. He then went to a tutor in Wiesbaden, but returned to London at the age of 18, due to a change in family finances.
His father expected Jack to follow him to a career in the City
City of London
The City of London is a small area within Greater London, England. It is the historic core of London around which the modern conurbation grew and has held city status since time immemorial. The City’s boundaries have remained almost unchanged since the Middle Ages, and it is now only a tiny part of...
, but he found he hated it. He tried banking, engineering
Engineering
Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...
, but they did not suit him. From 1908 to 1911 he was the private secretary to Pinero
Arthur Wing Pinero
Sir Arthur Wing Pinero was an English actor and later an important dramatist and stage director.-Biography:...
, which suited him better. In 1911, he moved to Paris where he worked as a journalist
Journalism
Journalism is the practice of investigation and reporting of events, issues and trends to a broad audience in a timely fashion. Though there are many variations of journalism, the ideal is to inform the intended audience. Along with covering organizations and institutions such as government and...
for the Continental Daily Mail.
He demonstrated a proficiency in languages from an early age, and began working with Egyptian hieroglyphs while still in school. While often described as entirely self taught, the Griffith Institute Archives say that he studied hieroglyphs at University College, London, as a student of Margaret Murray
Margaret Murray
Margaret Alice Murray was a prominent British Egyptologist and anthropologist. Primarily known for her work in Egyptology, which was "the core of her academic career," she is also known for her propagation of the Witch-cult hypothesis, the theory that the witch trials in the Early Modern period of...
.
Early career, and involvement with theosophy
In 1905 he played the role of "Priest of the Floods and Storms" in the Theosophical Society of London's production of The Shrine of the Golden Hawk, written and directed by Florence FarrFlorence Farr
Florence Beatrice Emery Farr was a British West End leading actress, composer and director. She was also a women's rights activist, journalist, educator, singer, novelist, leader of the occult order, The Golden Dawn and one time mistress of playwright George Bernard Shaw...
. In 1906 his translation of "The Instruction of Ptah-Hotep
The Maxims of Ptahhotep
The Maxims of Ptahhotep or Instruction of Ptahhotep is an ancient literary work attributed to Ptahhotep, a vizier under King Isesi of the Egyptian Fifth Dynasty . It is a collection of maxims and advice in the sebayt genre on human relations, that are directed to his son...
and The Instruction of Ke'Gemni
Instructions of Kagemni
The Instructions of Kagemni is an ancient Egyptian instructional text of wisdom literature which belongs to the sebayt genre. Although the earliest evidence of its compilation dates to the Middle Kingdom of Egypt, its authorship has traditionally yet dubiously been attributed to Kagemni, a vizier...
" (from the Prisse Papyrus
Prisse Papyrus
The Prisse Papyrus, dating from the twelfth dynasty Egyptian Middle Kingdom was obtained by the French orientalist Émile Prisse d'Avennes at Thebes in 1856 and is now in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris....
in Paris) was published as part of the "Wisdom of the East" series of wisdom literature
Wisdom literature
Wisdom literature is the genre of literature common in the Ancient Near East. This genre is characterized by sayings of wisdom intended to teach about divinity and about virtue...
. He later considered the translation to be premature and said: "I entirely repudiate my translation of the Prisse Papyrus, so far as one can repudiate what is in print." But it was considered a considerable improvement over previous translations, and is still in print.
He also seems to have been involved with the leaders of both factions of the occult
Occult
The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...
community in London at the time: Arthur Edward Waite
Arthur Edward Waite
Arthur Edward Waite was a scholarly mystic who wrote extensively on occult and esoteric matters, and was the co-creator of the Rider-Waite Tarot deck. As his biographer, R.A...
of the magical order, the Golden Dawn
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was a magical order active in Great Britain during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which practiced theurgy and spiritual development...
, and Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley , born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast, was an influential English occultist, astrologer, mystic and ceremonial magician, responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. He was also successful in various other...
, who created his own order, A∴A∴ after he left the Golden Dawn. R. A. Gilbert's biography of Waite describes Gunn as "an artist, an Egyptologist and an oriental linguist", and says that, in 1910, he "argued at great length over the correct transliteration of Hebrew terms used in the Grade rituals." Crowley based his new religion, Thelema
Thelema
Thelema is a religious philosophy that was established, defined and developed by the early 20th century British writer and ceremonial magician, Aleister Crowley. He believed himself to be the prophet of a new age, the Æon of Horus, based upon a religious experience that he had in Egypt in 1904...
, on the translation of Stele of Ankh-ef-en-Khonsu, also referred to as the "Stele of Revealing". He originally (1904) had it translated by the assistant curator of the Boulaq Museum in Cairo, under the supervision of the Egyptologist Bugsch Bet. In 1912, he arranged for another translation, by Gunn and Gardiner.
Crowley's periodical, The Equinox
The Equinox
The Equinox is a series of publications in book form that serves as the official organ of the A.'.A.'., a magical order founded by Aleister Crowley...
, contained a series of parodies aimed at Waite. In two of these, Battiscombe Gunn appeared as a minor character. In Volume 1, number 8 (Sept. 1912), Gunn appears in "Waite's Wet", a fictitious account of Waite's return to Crowley's group: "Waite's photograph, frock-coat and all, was carried in its red plush frame shoulder high by Mr. Battiscombe Gunn...". In Volume 1, number 10 (Sept 1913), Gunn appears in "Dead Weght" a false description of Waite's death (he actually lived until the 1940s): "Mr. Battiscombe Gunn was rapidly revising the funeral arrangements of the dying saint, which he proposed to found on some unedited documents of the Second Dynasty
Second dynasty of Egypt
The second dynasty of ancient Egypt is often combined with Dynasty I under the group title Early Dynastic Period. It dates approximately from 2890 to 2686 BC. The capital at that time was Thinis.-Rulers:...
, which showed conclusively that the sacred lotus was in reality a corset, and the Weapon of Men Thu a button-hook."
Another one-time member of the Golden Dawn with whom he had a documented connection was Allan Bennett
Charles Henry Allan Bennett
Charles Henry Allan Bennett was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. He was a friend, mentor and associate of author and occultist Aleister Crowley, though the association ended early on in their careers....
. Clifford Bax
Clifford Bax
Clifford Bax was a versatile English writer, known particularly as a playwright, a journalist, critic and editor, and a poet, lyricist and hymn writer. He also was a translator, for example of Goldoni...
, in his memoir "Some I Knew Well", describes Gunn arranging a meeting with Bennett. Bax was also a friend of Gunn's first wife, Meena, and her son Patrick, later Spike, Hughes
Spike Hughes
Patrick "Spike" Cairns Hughes was a British jazz musician, composer and music journalist. He was the son of Irish composer, writer and song collector Herbert Hughes...
.
By the 1930s, however, Gunn was highly antagonistic to Frederic H. Wood, who claimed that a long dead Egyptian princess spoke, in ancient Egyptian, through "Rosemary". This form of "speaking in tongues" is known as xenoglossy
Xenoglossy
Xenoglossy , also written xenoglossia , is the putative paranormal phenomenon in which a person is able to speak or write a language he or she supposedly could not have acquired by natural means...
. Rosemary's utterances were recorded phonetically and an Egyptologist, Mr. Hulme, claimed that Rosemary's speech conformed to the ancient Egyptian tongue, and could be translated into English. In the June 1937, issue of the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology
Journal 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....
, Gunn claimed that Hulme had manipulated the transcriptions to fit his own expectations of what he imagined ancient Egyptian to sound like. A later examination by John D. Ray
John D. Ray
Professor John D. Ray is the current Sir Herbert Thompson Professor of Egyptology at the University of Cambridge. His principal field of interest covers the Late and Hellenistic periods of Egypt, with special reference to documents in the demotic script, and he is also known for deciphering the...
(the current Sir Herbert Thompson Professor of Egyptology at the University of Cambridge) confirmed "there could be no mistaking Hulme's incompetence". Furthermore, both Gunn and Ray pointed out that Rosemary's visions of camels as domestic transport were inconsistent, as camels were not used for transport in 18th Dynasty Egypt
Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt
The eighteenth dynasty of ancient Egypt is perhaps the best known of all the dynasties of ancient Egypt...
. Wood's book on the subject, Egyptian Miracle, makes repeated derogatory references to Gunn, including "Also, the passing of our opponent Battiscombe Gunn, in 1950, can be recorded with the comment, De mortuis nil nisi bonum."
Professional career
Before he went to Paris in 1911, he had met Alan GardinerAlan Gardiner
Sir Alan Henderson Gardiner was one of the premier British Egyptologists of the early and mid-20th century...
. They remained life-long friends, and Gardiner was named in his will to coordinate the disposition of his professional papers. In 1913 visited Egypt for the first time, as epigrapher
Epigraphy
Epigraphy Epigraphy Epigraphy (from the , literally "on-writing", is the study of inscriptions or epigraphs as writing; that is, the science of identifying the graphemes and of classifying their use as to cultural context and date, elucidating their meaning and assessing what conclusions can be...
on the staff of Flinders Petrie's excavation at Harageh, near Fayum, working with Reginald Engelbach. The outreak of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
prevented him returning for the following season. Returning to England, he enlisted in the Artists Rifles, but was invalided out in 1915.
From 1915 to 1920 he worked as an assistant to Gardiner, primarily in the lexicographical work which lead to the 1947 publication of Ancient Egyptian Onomastica. Of this period, Gardiner said: "He was a real Bohemian and much of his research was carried on in his own lodgings at dead of night." A series of articles written while working with Gardiner led to the publication, in 1924, of his major publication, Studies in Egyptian Syntax. In this book, he identified the unusual syntactical relationship between negation and tense, now known as Gunn's Rule. Gunn's Rule still appears in modern textbooks.
In the winter of 1921 to 1922 he was a member of the team led by Thomas Eric Peet
Thomas Eric Peet
Thomas Eric Peet was an English Egyptologist.-Biography:Peet's parents were Thomas and Salome Peet. He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, Crosby and at Queen's College, Oxford. From 1909 onwards he conducted excavations in Egypt for the Egypt Exploration Fund...
and Leonard Woolley
Leonard Woolley
Sir Charles Leonard Woolley was a British archaeologist best known for his excavations at Ur in Mesopotamia...
excavating at Amarna
Amarna
Amarna is an extensive Egyptian archaeological site that represents the remains of the capital city newly–established and built by the Pharaoh Akhenaten of the late Eighteenth Dynasty , and abandoned shortly afterwards...
. He was then appointed (1922 to 1928) to the staff of the Service des Antiquities of the Egyptian government. During this time he worked with Cecil Firth
Cecil Mallaby Firth
Cecil Mallaby Firth was a British Egyptologist.Firth worked in Nubia of 1907 to 1911, then it started to explore the complex of Djoser's Step Pyramid in Saqqara where, in 1924, he discovered the serdab of the Pharaoh, which is now in the Cairo Museum.Firth then worked in collaboration with James E...
in the investigations of the pyramid of Teti
Teti
Teti, less commonly known as Othoes, was the first Pharaoh of the Sixth dynasty of Egypt and is buried at Saqqara. The exact length of his reign has been destroyed on the Turin King List, but is believed to have been about 12 years.-Biography:...
. He assisted in the translation of ostraca from the tomb of Tutankhamun
Tutankhamun
Tutankhamun , Egyptian , ; approx. 1341 BC – 1323 BC) was an Egyptian pharaoh of the 18th dynasty , during the period of Egyptian history known as the New Kingdom...
. Using field glasses, he was able to read the name Sneferu
Sneferu
Sneferu, also spelled as Snephru, Snefru or Snofru , was the founder of the Fourth dynasty of Egypt. Estimates of his reign vary, with for instance The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt suggesting a reign from around 2613 BC to 2589 BC, a reign of 24 years, while Rolf Krauss suggests a 30-year reign...
in the tomb which was eventually shown to be the tomb of Hetepheres I
Hetepheres I
Queen Hetepheres I was a Queen of Egypt during the 4th dynasty.- Biography :Hetepheres I may have been a daughter of pharaoh Huni. Her title God's Daughter suggests she was the daughter of a king and the most likely candidate is Huni, the predecessor of Sneferu...
.
He became assistant conservator of the Egyptian Museum
Egyptian Museum
The Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, known commonly as the Egyptian Museum, in Cairo, Egypt, is home to an extensive collection of ancient Egyptian antiquities. It has 120,000 items, with a representative amount on display, the remainder in storerooms....
in Cairo
Cairo
Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...
in 1928, the year in which his son, J. B. Gunn was born. During the time he lived in Maadi
Maadi
Maadi is a wealthy suburb south of Cairo, Egypt. The town is home to the Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt, Cairo American College , Lycée Français du Caire , Misr American College , Maadi British International School , the Cairo Rugby Club, and the national Egyptian Geological Museum.-...
, outside Cairo, he experimented with the manufacture of papyrus
Papyrus
Papyrus is a thick paper-like material produced from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus, a wetland sedge that was once abundant in the Nile Delta of Egypt....
, growing the plant in his garden. He beat the sliced papyrus stalks between two layers of linen, and produced successful examples of papyrus, one of which was exhibited in the Egyptian Museum
Egyptian Museum
The Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, known commonly as the Egyptian Museum, in Cairo, Egypt, is home to an extensive collection of ancient Egyptian antiquities. It has 120,000 items, with a representative amount on display, the remainder in storerooms....
in Cairo.
He moved to the University Museum
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, commonly called The Penn Museum, is an archaeology and anthropology museum that is part of the University of Pennsylvania in the University City neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.-History:An internationally renowned...
at the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
in Philadelphia in 1931 as curator of the Egyptian section. In 1934 he was given an honorary M.A. at Oxford, so he could be appointed Professor of Egyptology at the University of Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
, a chair he held until his death. He was made a Fellow of Queen's College
The Queen's College, Oxford
The Queen's College, founded 1341, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Queen's is centrally situated on the High Street, and is renowned for its 18th-century architecture...
, and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy
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...
in 1943.
While at Oxford, he devoted himself to his pupils and his classes, at the expense of his own research. He was Editor of the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology
Journal 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....
form 1934 to 1939, and was in active correspondence with a large number of other Egyptologists, all over the world. During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
several of his students (including Alec Dakin) worked on code breaking at Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park is an estate located in the town of Bletchley, in Buckinghamshire, England, which currently houses the National Museum of Computing...
. Other students include Ricardo Caminos
Ricardo Caminos
Ricardo Augusto Caminos was an Argentine Egyptologist focused on epigraphy and paleography. Caminos was born in Buenos Aires with a brother Hugo and sister Helena. As a child he was fascinated by ancient history, and Caminos went on to obtain his undergraduate degree and M.A. from University of...
, Warren Royal Dawson
Warren Royal Dawson
Warren Royal Dawson was an English insurance agent, Egyptologist and antiquarian.-Biography:Educated at St Paul's School, Dawson was forced to abandon his education on the death of his father in 1903...
, Peter Lewis Shinnie, Paul E. Kahle
Paul E. Kahle
Paul Ernst Kahle was a German orientalist and scholar.He was born in East Prussia and studied orientalism and theology in Marburg. He attained his doctorate in 1898. He was a Lutheran pastor. He studied semitic philology in Cairo between 1908 and 1918...
and T. G. H. James
T. G. H. James
Thomas Garnet Henry James, CBE, FBA was a British egyptologist, epigrapher and museum curator best known for his career long association with the British Museum, serving with the Department of Ancient Egypt from 1951 to 1988, including 14 years as Keeper...
.
Agatha Christie's
Agatha Christie
Dame Agatha Christie DBE was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections , and her successful West End plays.According to...
1944 detective novel Death Comes as the End
Death Comes as the End
Death Comes as the End is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie, first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in October 1944 and in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in March of the following year...
, set in Thebes
Thebes, Egypt
Thebes is the Greek name for a city in Ancient Egypt located about 800 km south of the Mediterranean, on the east bank of the river Nile within the modern city of Luxor. The Theban Necropolis is situated nearby on the west bank of the Nile.-History:...
in the Middle Kingdom
Middle Kingdom of Egypt
The Middle Kingdom of Egypt is the period in the history of ancient Egypt stretching from the establishment of the Eleventh Dynasty to the end of the Fourteenth Dynasty, between 2055 BC and 1650 BC, although some writers include the Thirteenth and Fourteenth dynasties in the Second Intermediate...
, is based on a series of letters that he translated.
For "Land of Enchanters - Egyptian Short Stories from the Earliest Times to the Present Day", published in 1947, he provided the English translation of both the Ancient Egyptian and Coptic
Coptic language
Coptic or Coptic Egyptian is the current stage of the Egyptian language, a northern Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Egypt until at least the 17th century. Egyptian began to be written using the Greek alphabet in the 1st century...
stories. A revised edition was published in 2002.
Personal life
By 1915, Jack had become involved with Meena Hughes, the estranged wife of musician and Irish song collector Herbert HughesHerbert Hughes (musicologist)
Herbert Hughes was an Irish composer, music critic and collector of folk songs.He was born and brought up in Belfast, Ireland, but completed his formal music education at the Royal College of Music, London, graduating in 1901...
. She was born Lillian Meacham, in Maidstone, Kent, but had spent most of her teeange years in Cape Town, South Africa, where her father, C.S. Meacham, was brewery manager and corporate chemist for Olsson's Brewery. She was given the nickname Meena by Orage
Alfred Richard Orage
Alfred Richard Orage was a British intellectual, now best known for editing the magazine The New Age. While working as a schoolteacher in Leeds, he pursued various interests, including Plato, the Independent Labour Party, and theosophy...
, who said that her childhood blond plaits reminded him of Princess Wilhelmina
Wilhelmina of the Netherlands
Wilhelmina was Queen regnant of the Kingdom of the Netherlands from 1890 to 1948. She ruled the Netherlands for fifty-eight years, longer than any other Dutch monarch. Her reign saw World War I and World War II, the economic crisis of 1933, and the decline of the Netherlands as a major colonial...
. In her late teens, she returned to London to study piano at the Royal Academy of Music
Royal Academy of Music
The Royal Academy of Music in London, England, is a conservatoire, Britain's oldest degree-granting music school and a constituent college of the University of London since 1999. The Academy was founded by Lord Burghersh in 1822 with the help and ideas of the French harpist and composer Nicolas...
. Her younger sister was Gwendoline Meacham, who became a Scots Nationalist, and changed her name to Wendy Wood
Wendy Wood
Wendy Wood was a well-known campaigner for Scottish independence and founder of the Scottish Patriots...
.
In addition to playing piano, for which she won 2 gold medals and then stopped playing, she became part of the circle around G. B. Shaw and H. G. Wells
H. G. Wells
Herbert George Wells was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books and rules for war games...
. She was a member of the Fabian Society
Fabian Society
The Fabian Society is a British socialist movement, whose purpose is to advance the principles of democratic socialism via gradualist and reformist, rather than revolutionary, means. It is best known for its initial ground-breaking work beginning late in the 19th century and continuing up to World...
and attended Theosophy
Theosophy
Theosophy, in its modern presentation, is a spiritual philosophy developed since the late 19th century. Its major themes were originally described mainly by Helena Blavatsky , co-founder of the Theosophical Society...
lectures. In 1907, not long before her marriage to Hughes, she had a brief affair with the sculptor, printmaker and typographer Eric Gill
Eric Gill
Arthur Eric Rowton Gill was a British sculptor, typeface designer, stonecutter and printmaker, who was associated with the Arts and Crafts movement...
, with whom both she and Jack were life-long friends. Jack rented a cottage in Ditchling, where Gill was located, in the summer of 1919, and Jack, Meena and Pat all stayed there.
In 1915, in the midst of World War I, Meena was in Florence, Italy, visiting another suitor, a "rich American". Jack escorted her seven year old son, Patrick Hughes (later Spike Hughes
Spike Hughes
Patrick "Spike" Cairns Hughes was a British jazz musician, composer and music journalist. He was the son of Irish composer, writer and song collector Herbert Hughes...
) from London to Florence, and then returned. In his autobiography, "Opening Bars", Pat describes his part in her decision to return to England and marry Jack. Her divorce from Herbert Hughes, however, was not finalized until 1922.
During the early 1920s, while Jack was working in Egypt during the season, Meena spent quite a lot of time in central Europe, and Jack spent his summers there. In 1924, Meena studied psychoanalysis with Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
in Vienna, and Sándor Ferenczi
Sándor Ferenczi
Sándor Ferenczi was a Hungarian psychoanalyst, a key theorist of the psychoanalytic school and a close associate of Sigmund Freud.-Biography:...
in Budapest. During this time, Jack was asked to visit Freud and look at his Egyptian antiquities. He never said anything to Freud, but he was convinced that nearly all of them were fakes. Meena was a practicing psychoanalyst for the following 45 years, into her 80s. While Jack was Professor of Egyptology at Oxford, Meena maintained a psychoanalytical practice on Harley Street
Harley Street
Harley Street is a street in the City of Westminster in London, England which has been noted since the 19th century for its large number of private specialists in medicine and surgery.- Overview :...
in London. After World War II she worked closely with Anna Freud
Anna Freud
Anna Freud was the sixth and last child of Sigmund and Martha Freud. Born in Vienna, she followed the path of her father and contributed to the newly born field of psychoanalysis...
, and in the 1960s she practiced in the U.S.
After she completed her psychoanalytic training, Meena accompanied Jack while he was working in Egypt, and in 1928, their son J. B. Gunn, known as Iain, (later a physicist) was born in Cairo.
In 1940, Meena and Jack were divorced, as Meena wanted to marry Alex Grey-Clarke, a young Harley Street doctor.
In 1948 Jack married Constance Rogers, a librarian at the Ashmolean Museum
Ashmolean Museum
The Ashmolean Museum on Beaumont Street, Oxford, England, is the world's first university museum...
.
"Jack's death, early in 1950, was preceded by some characteristic last words. He sent for his son Iain and Iain's fiancee, and as he lay on his death-bed, delivered a wise and paternal little speech on the advantages of marriage, and gave the two youngsters his blessing. Then he turned to his wife and said: "I shall look a bloody fool if I don't die after that, won't I?", and died within a few moments."