John Garstang

Who was John Garstang?

John Garstang was a British archaeologist of the ancient Near East, especially Anatolia and the southern Levant.

John Garstang was born to Walter Garstang of Blackburn and was the younger brother of Professor Walter Garstang, FRS, a marine biologist and zoologist. He was educated at Queen Elizabeth's, Blackburn; and Jesus College, Oxford. Following undergraduate studies in mathematics at Oxford, his attentions turned to archaeology.

From 1897 to 1908 he conducted excavations at Roman sites in Britain, Egypt, Nubia, Asia Minor and North Syria; in the Sudan and Meroe between 1909 and 1914, then in Palestine at Ashkelon and in Trans-Jordan at Jericho in 1930–1936.

He was Professor of Archaeology at the University of Liverpool from 1907 to 1941.

He served as the Director of the Department of Antiquities in the British Mandate of Palestine between 1920 and 1926, as well as filling the position of Head of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem. He taught at the Egyptology section of the Faculty of Arts when this was established in the 1920s. One of his students was Pahor Labib, late Director of the Coptic Museum, Cairo.