A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature/Wilkinson, Sir John Gardner

by John William Cousin

Wilkinson, Sir John Gardner (1797-1875).—Egyptologist, s. of a Westmoreland clergyman, studied at Oxf. In 1821 he went to Egypt, and remained there and in Nubia exploring, surveying, and studying the hieroglyphical inscriptions, on which he made himself one of the great authorities. He pub. two important works, of great literary as well as scholarly merit, Materia Hieroglyphica (1828) and Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians (6 vols., 1837-41). He wrote various books of travel, and was knighted in 1839.