Édouard Naville

Who was Édouard Naville?

Henri Édouard Naville was a Swiss archaeologist, egyptologist and Biblical Scholar.

Born in Geneva, he studied at the University of Geneva, King's College, London, and the Universities of Bonn, Paris, and Berlin. He was a student of Karl Richard Lepsius and later his literary executor.

He first visited Egypt in 1865, where he copied the Horus texts in the temple at Edfu. During the Franco-Prussian War he served as a captain in the Swiss army. His early work concerned the solar texts and the Book of the Dead.In 1882 he was invited to work for the newly founded Egypt Exploration Fund. He excavated a number of sites in the Nile Delta including Tell el-Maskhuts, the Wadi Tumilat, Bubastis, Tell el-Yahudia, Saft el-Hinna, Ahnas, Mendes and Tell Mukdam. Many of the objects he found in his Delta excavations are preserved in the Cairo Museum, British Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

In the 1890s he excavated at the mortuary temple of Hatchepsut at Deir el Bahri where he was assisted by David George Hogarth, Somers Clarke and Howard Carter. In 1903-06 he returned to Deir el Bahri to excavate the temple of Mentuhotep II, assisted by Henry Hall.