George Andrew Reisner

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George Andrew Reisner bigraphy, stories - Egyptologist

George Andrew Reisner : biography

November 5, 1867 – June 6, 1942

George Andrew Reisner (November 5, 1867 – June 6, 1942) was an American archaeologist of Ancient Egypt. He also served as the head football coach at Purdue University, coaching for one season in 1889 and compiling a record of 2–1.

Works

  • (reprint ISBN 978-1-57898-718-4)
  • (reprint ISBN 0-527-01028-6)
  • (with Clarence Stanley Fisher and David Gordon Lyon)
  • (completed by Mohammad Hassan Abd-ul-Rahman)

Biography

Reisner was born in Indianapolis, Indiana and died in Giza, Egypt. Upon his studies at Jebel Barkal (The Holy Mountain), in Nubia he found the Nubian kings were not buried in the pyramids but outside of them. He also found the skull of a Nubian female (who he thought was a king) which is in the collection of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard. Reisner believed that Kerma was originally the base of an Egyptian governor and that these Egyptian rulers evolved into the independent monarchs of Kerma.

He also created a list of Egyptian viceroys of Kush. He found the tomb of Queen Hetepheres I, the mother of King Khufu (Cheops in Greek) who built the Great Pyramid at Giza. During this time he also explored mastabas. Arthur Merton, a fellow member of the Cairo Rotary Club, remarked in 1936 in the aftermath of the Abuwtiyuw discovery that Reisner "enjoys an unrivalled position not only as the outstanding figure in present-day Egyptology, but also as a man whose soundness of judgement and extensive general knowledge are widely conceded."

He met Queen Marie of Romania in Giza.

Head coaching record

Timeline

  • 1897–1899: Classified Egyptology collection of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo
  • 1899–1905: Led the Hearst Expedition of the University of California to explore burial grounds at and around Qift
  • 1905: Edited The Hearst Medical Papyrus
  • 1905–1914: Assistant professor of Egyptology at Harvard University
  • 1907–1909: Directed archaeological survey of Nubia (Nilotic Sudan) for Egyptian government
  • 1910–1942: Curator of Egyptian collections at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts
  • 1914–1942: Professor of Egyptology at Harvard University
  • 1916–1923: Explored pyramids of Meroë, dug out temple at Napata
  • 1931: Wrote Mycerinus (alternative name of Menkaure)
  • 1942: Published final work, A History of the Giza Necropolis

Family

Parents of Reisner were George Andrew Reisner I and his wife, Mary Elizabeth Mason. His father’s parents were of German descent. A Biographical Dictionary of Historic Scholars.

He married Mary Putnam Bronson, who bore him a daughter also called Mary.