32 Facts About Battiscombe Gunn

Battiscombe George "Jack" Gunn was an English Egyptologist and philologist.

Battiscombe Gunn published his first translation from Egyptian in 1906.

Battiscombe Gunn translated inscriptions for many important excavations and sites, including Fayum, Saqqara, Amarna, Giza and Luxor.

Battiscombe Gunn was curator at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and at the University Museum at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

Battiscombe Gunn was educated at Bedales School, Westminster School and Allhallows School, Honiton.

Battiscombe Gunn then went to a tutor in Wiesbaden, but returned to London at the age of 18, due to a change in family finances.

Battiscombe Gunn's father expected Jack to follow him to a career in the City, but he found he hated it.

Battiscombe Gunn tried banking, engineering, but they did not suit him.

Battiscombe Gunn demonstrated a proficiency in languages from an early age, and began working with Egyptian hieroglyphs while still in school.

Battiscombe Gunn later considered the translation to be premature and said: "I entirely repudiate my translation of the Prisse Papyrus, so far as one can repudiate what is in print".

On 10 January 1906, Battiscombe Gunn was inducted into Waite's "Independent and Rectified Rite".

Battiscombe Gunn originally had it translated by the assistant curator of the Boulaq Museum in Cairo, under the supervision of the Egyptologist Emile Brugsch.

In two of these, Battiscombe Gunn appeared as a minor character.

Letters from Crowley to Battiscombe Gunn indicate that it was more than a casual acquaintance.

Battiscombe Gunn experienced a conflict between the scientific and secular aspect of his professional career, and his spiritual interests.

Battiscombe Gunn was highly antagonistic to Frederic H Wood, who claimed that a long-dead Egyptian princess spoke, in ancient Egyptian, through "Rosemary".

Battiscombe Gunn was then appointed to the staff of the Service des antiquites de l'Egypte.

Battiscombe Gunn assisted in the translation of ostraca from the tomb of Tutankhamun.

Battiscombe Gunn became assistant conservator of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo in 1928, the year in which his son, J B Gunn was born.

Battiscombe Gunn beat the sliced papyrus stalks between two layers of linen, and produced successful examples of papyrus, one of which was exhibited in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Battiscombe Gunn moved to the University Museum at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in 1931 as curator of the Egyptian section.

Battiscombe Gunn was made a Fellow of Queen's College, and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1943.

Battiscombe Gunn was Editor of the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology from 1934 to 1939, and was in active correspondence with a large number of other Egyptologists, all over the world.

Battiscombe Gunn was given the nickname Meena by Orage, who said that her childhood blond plaits reminded him of Princess Wilhelmina.

Battiscombe Gunn was a member of the Fabian Society and attended Theosophy lectures.

In 1907, not long before her marriage to Hughes, she had a brief affair with the sculptor, printmaker and typographer Eric Gill, with whom both she and Battiscombe Gunn were lifelong friends.

Battiscombe Gunn rented a cottage in Ditchling, where Gill was located, in the summer of 1919, and he, Meena and Pat all stayed there.

Battiscombe Gunn escorted her seven-year-old son, Patrick Hughes from London to Florence, and then returned.

Battiscombe Gunn never said anything to Freud, but he was convinced that nearly all of them were fakes.

In 1940, Meena and Battiscombe Gunn were divorced, as Meena wanted to marry Alex Grey-Clarke, a young Harley Street doctor.

In 1948, Battiscombe Gunn married Constance Rogers, a librarian at the Ashmolean Museum.

Battiscombe Gunn sent for his son Iain and Iain's fiancee, and as he lay on his death-bed, delivered a wise and paternal little speech on the advantages of marriage, and gave the two youngsters his blessing.