Henri Frankfort
Dutch Egyptologist, archaeologist, and orientalist; he was born in Amsterdam 24 Feb. 1897, son of Benjamin Philippe F., a merchant in Near Eastern trade, and Mathilde Israels; he studied history at the University of Amsterdam from 1919-21; MA, 1921; he then transferred to University College London where he took an MA under Sir Flinders Petrie, 1924; PhD University of Leiden, 1927; he married 1. 1923 (m.diss. 1952) Henriette Groenewegen, 2. Enriqueta Harris; he served in the Netherlands Army 1915-17; in 1922 he joined the staff of Petrie’s expedition to Egypt at Qau el- Kebir and later travelled throughout the Near East; in 1924-5 he was a student at the British School of Archaeology in Athens and between 1925 and 1929 the director of excavations of the EES, mainly at El-Amarna, Abydos, and Armant; in 1929 he was invited by Breasted to be field director of the Oriental Institute Iraq expedition and held this position until 1937; in 1932 he was appointed Research Professor of Oriental Archaeology at the Oriental Institute of the Univ. of Chicago, also holding the position of Extraordinary Prof. in the History and Archaeology of the Ancient Near East in the Univ. of Amsterdam to 1938; he was also chairman of the Dept. of Oriental Languages 199 and Literatures at Chicago; in 1949 he became director of the Warburg Institute and Prof. of the History of Preclassical Antiquity in the Univ. of London; he was a Correspondent of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences, Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, FSA, FBA, Member of the American Oriental Soc., Member of the American Philosophical Soc. and of the EES; he published 15 books and monographs and contributed parts to about 20 more, and 73 articles for journals as well as many book reviews; see especially Studies in Early Pottery of the Near East, 2 vols. 1924-7; Cylinder Seals, 1939; Ancient Egyptian Religion: An Interpretation, 1948; Kingship and the Gods, 1948; The Art and Architecture of the Ancient Orient, 1954; the Mural painting of El-’Amarneh, 1929; the centotaph of Seti I at Abydos, with A. de Buck and B. Gunn, 2 vols. 1933; The City of Akhenaten, vol. ii, with J. D. S. Pendlebury, 1933; Before Philosophy, 1946; he died in London, 16 July 1954.
