WILKINSON, Sir ,TOIIN GARDNER (1797 1875). A distinguished English traveler and Egyptologist, born October 5, 1797. Wilkinson was educated at narrow and at Exeter College, Oxford, but left the university without taking a degree and went to Italy for his health in 1520. Becoming interested in Egypto]ogiea] studies, he went to Egypt in 1821 and took up his abode at Cairo, where he soon became proficient in Arabic and in Coptic. In the course of the next twelve years he explored nearly every part of Egypt and Lower Nubia, twice ascending the Nile as far as the second cataract and several times as far as Thebes. To the exploration of the latter site he devoted more than a year, and he also visited the deserts on either side of the Nile and the Egyptian oases. As a result of his first visit to Egypt, lie transmitted to the British :Museum more than 300 antiquarian objects, besides nu merous specimens of natural history. His first work on Egyptian antiquities, Materia Hicro glyphica, was published at Malta in 1828. It was followed, two years later, by Extracts from Sereral Hieroglyphical Subjects, and in the same year (1830) lie published his Topographical Sur rey of Thebes in six sheets. In 1833 he was com pelled by ill health to return to England, and at the close of the following year he was elected fellow of the I;oyal Society. Ilis Topography of Tiubes and General V ielf^ of Egypt was published at London in 1833, and two years later appeared his great work, Manners and Customs of the An cient Egyptians (3 vols., hest ed. by luirch, 1878),
a work remarkable both for the extensive and ac em•ate information it contains and for the agree able style in which it is written. It immediately attained great popularity and gained for its author in 1839 the honor of knighthood. In 1841 he revisited Egypt, travelog] extensively in Northern Africa, Syria, and Turkey, and re turned to England in 1843. In the year of his return he published his Modern Egypt and Thebes, of which a new and condensed edition was issued among hurray's Hand-books in 1S47. A journey through Nontenegro. Herzegovina, and Bosnia in 1344 furnished the material for his Dalmatia and Montenegro (2 vols.. 1S4S). Ire visited Egypt for the third time in 1 S4S-49 and again in 1855-56. He presented his collec tion of Egyptian, Greek, and other antiquitie=, to Harrow School and in 1374 gave to the same institution his valuable collection of coins and medals. lle died at Llandovery, in Wales, Oc tober 29, 1875. Among Wilkinson's other works may be mentioned: The Architecture of Ancient Egypt (1850) ; The Fragments of the Hieratic l'apyrus at Turin (1851) : A Popular Account of the Ancient Egyptians (1S53); The Egyptians in the Time of the Pharaohs (1857); On Color, and on the Necessity for a General Diffusion of Taste Among All Classes (185S).