Veronica Marjory Seton-Williams
British-Australian archaeologist; she was born in Melbourne, 20 April 1910, daughter of Seton Gordon Nixon Williams, a lawyer, and Eliza Mary Staughton; she was educated at home, Clyde Girls Grammar School, and the University of Melbourne where she studied history and political science as there were no courses in archaeology or Egyptology which were her chief interests; she graduated in 1934 and went to England to study Egyptology and later prehistory at University College London; Diploma in Prehistory; PhD, 1957; she excavated with Mortimer Wheeler at Maiden Castle, 1934-6; with Petrie at Sheikh Zuweyed in the Sinai, 1935-6, with Garstang in Palestine and Turkey, 1936-7, and with Starkey at Tell 504 el-Duweir, 1937-8; during World War II she worked in the Ministry of Information; she later taught at the Institute of Archaeology, the City Literary Institute, and in the Department of Extra-Mural Studies, University of London until 1977; FSA, 1947; she excavated in Syria, 1956-60 and was field director of the Egypt Exploration Society’s excavation at Tell el-Farain (Buto), 1964-8; from 1963 she was a regular lecturer for Swan’s Nile cruises; her publications were Britain and the Arab States, 1948; Ptolemaic Temples, 1978; Les Trésors de Tutankhamon, 1980; Les Trésors de Babylone, 1981; Blue Guide to Egypt, with Peter Stocks, 1983, rev. 1988; El-Amarna, 1984; Egyptian Poems, 1987; Egyptian Stories and Legends, 1988; her autobiography The Road to El-Aguzein, 1988; and A Short History of Egypt, 1989; she died at St Helier, Jersey, 29 May 1992.
