John Wilson

Education

Princeton University.

Career

After graduating from Princeton University in 1920 he taught English at the American University in Beirut. There he met faculty member Harold H. Nelson who introduced him to hieroglyphics and in 1923 to the famous Egyptologist James Henry Breasted. He was offered by Breasted a fellowship at the Oriental Institute, where he earned his doctorate in 1926.

He was sent to Luxor by Breasted as an epigrapher and after further study in Munich and Berlin he returned to Chicago and was appointed associate professor of Egyptology at the University of Chicago in 1931.

He succeeded Breasted as director of the Oriental Institute when he died in 1936. He continued as Director until 1946 after leading the Institute through a difficult financial period.

He was honored by being named Distinguished Service Professor in 1953. With the building of the Aswan Dam he was appointed as the American representative and eventually became the chairman of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Consultative Committee for the Salvage of the Nubian Monuments.

He had many honors conferred upon him by various universities and societies including: Doctorate. Lii.

Through a benefactor the John A. Wilson Professorship of Oriental Studies was inaugurated in 1968.

Achievements

• By Princeton (1961), D.H.L by Loyola University of Chicago, elected as a corresponding member of the German Archaeological Society (1954), a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1968) and corresponding member of the Institut d"Egypte (1969).

Works

More photos

• book

  • Signs and Wonders Upon Pharaoh: A History of American Egyptology

    (xxv + 243 pp. & 32 plates, 8vo.)

  • Signs & Wonders Upon Pharaoh. A History of American Egyptology
  • The Culture of Ancient Egypt by John A. Wilson (1956-08-15)

Membership

American Academy of Arts and Sciences.