Edward R. Ayrton

Who was Edward R. Ayrton?

Edward Russell Ayrton was an English Egyptologist and archaeologist.

He was the son of William Scrope Ayrton, 1849-1904 and his wife Ellen Louisa McClatchie, and was born in Wuhu, China, on 17 December 1882. He was educated at St Paul's School, in London.

He began his career in Egyptology at the age of 20, assisting the pioneer of systematic methodology in archaeology William Matthew Flinders Petrie. He joined Petrie on the Egypt Exploration Fund excavations at Abydos from 1902 to 1904.

Ayrton's first independent work was the excavation of the Second Dynasty site of Shunet ez Zebib. Later, he worked near Ghurab with William Leonard Stevenson Loat.

In 1904-05 he excavated and recorded graves of several ancient princesses found in the funerary temple complex of king Mentuhotep II at Deir al-Bahari, as part of the expedition led by Édouard Naville and Henry Hall.

Working for Theodore M. Davis in Egypt's Valley of the Kings from 1905 to 1908, he discovered the following tombs:

KV47