Battiscombe Gunn

Battiscombe "Jack" George Gunn (30 June 1883–27 February 1950) was an English Egyptologist.

Gunn was born in London and educated at Bedales School, Westminster School and Allhallows School, Honiton. After trying banking, engineering and journalism, he was the private secretary to Pinero from 1908 to 1911. In 1913 he became an assistant to the noted Egyptologist Flinders Petrie. He was invalided out of the army after the start of WWI , and then became assistant to Alan Gardiner. From 1921 to 1922 he assisted Leonard Woolley in the excavations of Amarna. He also worked with Cecil Firth in the investigations of the pyramid of Teti. He became assistant conservator of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo in 1928. 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 appointed Professor of Egyptology at the University of Oxford, a chair he held until his death. He was given an honorary M.A. at Oxford and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1943.

He was the father of the physicist John Battiscombe Gunn, the stepfather of the musician and author Spike Hughes, and the brother-in-law of the Scots nationalist Wendy Wood.

References

*Dictionary of National Biography