Percy E. Newberry

Percy E. Newberry made his career from close study of objects, records and excavation sites. He began with the Egypt Exploration Fund, led work at Beni Hasan and El Bersha from 1890 to 1894, and later surveyed the Theban necropolis as an independent excavator. These projects joined archaeological fieldwork with cataloguing and drawing, in a discipline shaped by access to museums, private owners and antiquities dealers.

In Scarabs: An Introduction to the Study of Egyptian Seals and Signet Rings, he turned a long residence in Thebes and years examining material in museum and private collections into a reference work. His preface says the book illustrates about 1,300 pieces selected from drawings of some 7,000, after he had examined more than 30,000 examples. He also wrote about visiting Luxor antiquities shops to inspect objects in dealers’ hands, a detail that shows how closely early twentieth-century Egyptology was tied to the trade in antiquities.

Newberry became the University of Liverpool’s first professor of Egyptology in 1906 and later taught ancient Egyptian history and archaeology in Cairo. His publications included excavation reports and catalogues as well as Scarabs. The book’s preface records thanks to museum keepers and private collectors who let him study their objects, while explaining why the Cairo Museum’s collection appears only sparingly. He died in 1949.