Warren Royal Dawson was an English

English people

The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...

 insurance agent, Egyptologist and antiquarian

Antiquarian

An antiquarian or antiquary is an aficionado or student of antiquities or things of the past. More specifically, the term is used for those who study history with particular attention to ancient objects of art or science, archaeological and historic sites, or historic archives and manuscripts...

.

Biography

Educated at St Paul's School, Dawson was forced to abandon his education on the death of his father in 1903. He entered the insurance business, establishing his own underwriting agency in 1922; a partnership in 1929 allowed him leisure to pursue his scholarly interests. He had married Alys Helen Wood in 1912. Ill-health prompted retirement in 1936 to live at Bletchley.

Scholarly activity

Encouraged by Wallis Budge at the British Museum

British 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...

, Dawson began serious amateur study of Egyptian hieroglyphs in 1914. A lifelong interest in Egyptian mummification began with collaboration with the anatomist Grafton Elliot Smith

Grafton Elliot Smith

Sir Grafton Elliot Smith, FRS FRCP was an Australian anatomist and a proponent of the hyperdiffusionist view of prehistory.-Professional career:Smith was born in Grafton, New South Wales...

. Dawson's study of ancient medicine resulted in Magician and Leech, and many later articles. Though Dawson never himself travelled to 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...

, "he talked of it as it he had known it well. Much of his knowledge of the land he had acquired directly from the best guides – the great Egyptologists of the last generation, Budge, 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...

, Gardiner

Alan Gardiner

Sir Alan Henderson Gardiner was one of the premier British Egyptologists of the early and mid-20th century...

, Petrie, Newberry

Percy Newberry

Percy Edward Newberry was a British Egyptologist.-Early life:Newberry was born in Islington, London in 1869. His mother was named Caroline Wyatt, and his father, Henry James Newberry, was a woollen warehouseman. Newberry developed a strong attachment to botany in childhood and was also an...

, Gunn

Battiscombe Gunn

Battiscombe "Jack" George Gunn 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...

.". He published biographical accounts of Thomas Pettigrew

Thomas Pettigrew

Thomas Joseph Pettigrew , sometimes known as "Mummy" Pettigrew, was a surgeon and antiquarian who became an expert on Ancient Egyptian mummies...

 (1931), Charles Wycliffe Goodwin

Charles Wycliffe Goodwin

Charles Wycliffe Goodwin was a British Egyptologist, lawyer and judge.Goodwin was born in 1817. He studied at St Catherine's and graduated, in 1838, 6th Classic and senior optime in Mathematics. He was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1843 and in 1865 became assistant judge of the British...

 (1934) and Grafton Elliot Smith

Grafton Elliot Smith

Sir Grafton Elliot Smith, FRS FRCP was an Australian anatomist and a proponent of the hyperdiffusionist view of prehistory.-Professional career:Smith was born in Grafton, New South Wales...

 (1938), as well as Who was who in Egyptology (1951), a 'biographical index' to Egyptologists.

Dawson also catalogued the manuscripts of the Medical Society of London

Medical Society of London

The Medical Society of London is one of the oldest surviving medical societies in the United Kingdom ....

 (1932), the Linnean Society (1936), and the Huxley Papers in the Imperial College of Science (1946); he calendared the correspondence of Joseph Banks

Joseph Banks

Sir Joseph Banks, 1st Baronet, GCB, PRS was an English naturalist, botanist and patron of the natural sciences. He took part in Captain James Cook's first great voyage . Banks is credited with the introduction to the Western world of eucalyptus, acacia, mimosa and the genus named after him,...

for the British Museum (1958).

Works

• (with Grafton Elliot Smith) Egyptian mummies, 1924
• Bibliography of Works relating to Mummification in Egypt, 1928
• Magician and leech: a study in the beginnings of medicine with special reference to ancient Egypt, 1929
• The custom of couvade, 1929
• The beginnings, Egypt and Assyria, 1930
• The bridle of Pegasus; studies in magic, mythology and folklore, 1930
• Who was who in Egyptology, 1951. Revised edition, 1972.

External links