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Percy E. Newberry

London, 1869 - 1949, Surrey

BiographyLC name authority rec. nn87130065
LC Heading: Newberry, Percy E. (Percy Edward), 1869-1949

Biography:
Newberry, Percy Edward (1869–1949), Egyptologist, was born in Islington, London, on 23 April 1869, the younger son of Henry James Newberry, a woollen warehouseman, of Lewisham, and his wife, Caroline Wyatt. He was educated at King's College School and King's College, London. As a child he had a particular interest in botany, which he studied in London and at Kew. He was a gifted artist and illustrator who came to archaeology through these skills. Unlike his contemporary Howard Carter, of Tutankhamun fame, Newberry lacked natural ability, but he became an expert copyist. While still a young student he was introduced to the Egyptologist Reginald Stuart Poole of the British Museum, who served as a mentor. From 1884 to 1886 Poole enlisted Newberry to help with the administration of the newly founded Egypt Exploration Fund (later to become Society). The work brought the young Newberry into contact with such Egyptological luminaries as Amelia Edwards, Flinders Petrie, and F. L. Griffith. As a result he made Egyptology the focus of his life and studied it intensively. Petrie made use of Newberry's botanical expertise to identify the botanical remains found during his excavations in the Fayyum Depression. Newberry presented a paper to the British Association on the plant species in the excavations in 1888, as well as contributing chapters to Petrie's monographs on Hawara (1889) and Kahun (1890).

In 1889 Newberry's mentor, Griffith, advocated an archaeological survey of Egypt to be conducted under the aegis of the Egypt Exploration Fund. The fund adopted the scheme in 1890. As part of this ambitious project, Newberry was sent out to the Nile valley to head an expedition to investigate the tombs of Middle Kingdom nomarchs at Beni Hasan and El Bersha from 1890 to 1894. Much of the work involved copying tomb paintings, in which he was joined by Howard Carter. Newberry was uncompromising in his requirements. ‘Mechanical exactitude of facsimile-copying is required rather than freehand or purely artistic work’, read the survey's instructions. Newberry followed them to the letter, unlike the more gifted Carter, who believed in observing ‘the fundamental Laws of Egyptian Art’. Newberry was conservative in his copying, but produced an impressive body of work. In 1893–4 he published his two-volume monograph Beni Hasan, which remains a definitive account of the tombs there. His competence established after five years with the fund, Newberry operated as a freelance excavator in the Theban necropolis from 1895 to 1901. His patrons included Lord Amherst, the marquess of Northampton, and the American excavator Theodore Davis.

On the strength of this fieldwork and his broad experience, Newberry was appointed the first Brunner professor of Egyptology at the University of Liverpool in 1906, where he took an MA in 1909. On 12 February 1907 he married Essie Winifred (1878–1953), daughter of William Munn Johnston, a Liverpool shipowner, of Bromborough, Cheshire. There were no children of the marriage. He held the Brunner chair until 1919, when he was nominated university reader in Egyptian art. During those years he was an influential member of the faculty. He was active in many learned societies and elected a fellow of King's College, London, in 1908. He was appointed OBE in 1919. In 1923 he served as president of the anthropology section of the British Association. His association with the Egypt Exploration Society lasted for sixty-five years. He was elected vice-president shortly before his death. He was vice-president of the Royal Anthropological Institute in 1926. In 1929 he accepted the chair of ancient Egyptian history and archaeology at the University of Egypt in Cairo, a post he held for four years.

Newberry's publications included a noteworthy series of monographs, among them the Archaeological Survey volumes on Beni Hasan, El Bersheh (2 parts, 1895), The Amherst Papyri (1899), The Life of Rekhmara, a vizier of the pharaohs Tuthmosis III and Amenhotep II (1900), and Scarabs (1906). His Short History of Ancient Egypt (1904), written with John Garstang, was widely read. Newberry also compiled three volumes of the great Catalogue général of the Cairo Museum. Throughout his career Newberry wrestled with a backlog of unpublished work, which he never completed. His unfinished manuscripts, notebooks, and papers were presented by his widow to the Griffith Institute at Oxford University.

A gentlemanly, urbane man, who never achieved the fame of Flinders Petrie or Howard Carter, Percy Newberry was an important figure in Egyptology who influenced several generations of young Egyptologists. He devoted much of his career to fostering others' researches through the Egypt Exploration Society and played an important part in organizing the society's work at the pharaoh Akhenaten's capital at Tel el Amarna in the 1930s. He was responsible for recording many heavily damaged tombs, of which his copies are often the only record. He died at his home, Winkworth Hill, Hascombe, near Godalming, Surrey, on 7 August 1949.

Brian Fagan
Sources DNB · Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 36 (1950) · W. R. Dawson and E. P. Uphill, Who was who in Egyptology, 3rd edn, rev. M. L. Bierbrier (1995) · H. F. V. Winstone, Howard Carter (1991)
Archives U. Oxf., Griffith Institute, biographical notes relating to nineteenth-century Egyptologists and other papers · U. Oxf., Griffith Institute, corresp. and papers, incl. copies, notes, photographs :: Bodl. Oxf., corresp. with J. L. Myres · Egypt Exploration Society, London, corresp. with Egypt Exploration Society · U. Oxf., Griffith Institute, corresp. with Jaroslav Cerny
Likenesses A. Lipczinski, group portrait, oils, 1915, U. Lpool
Wealth at death £2897 16s. 4d.: probate, 21 April 1950, CGPLA Eng. & Wales
© Oxford University Press 2004–15
All rights reserved: see legal notice Oxford University Press

(Brian Fagan, ‘Newberry, Percy Edward (1869–1949)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford Uniersity Press, 2004; online edn, Oct 2006 [http://proxy.bostonathenaeum.org:2055/view/article/35210, accessed 1 Oct 2015])

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Last Updated8/7/24

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