science · 29 July 1898 · 126 years ago
birth
Born 29 Jul 1898; died 26 Feb 1980 at age 81.
English historian and Egyptologist who was one of the pioneers of archaeological search in Sudan where, as an outstanding colonial administrator, he combined a passion for the past with a humanitarian concern for the peoples of modern Africa. After serving in the Royal Air Force, Arkell joined the Sudan Political Service (1920) and set about abolishing the slave trade between the Sudan and Ethiopia. He was appointed commissioner for archaeology and anthropology in 1938 and undertook several digs that opened up the previously unknown field of Sudanese prehistory. He returned to England in 1948, and wrote his authoritative A History of the Sudan From the Earliest Times to 1821 (1955). This book gave a comprehensive history of the Sudan running from the Stone Age to the advent of the Turks in 1821, based upon his archeological and anthropological findings. He also wrote The Prehistory of the Nile Valley.
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