A. J. Arkell

Anthony John Arkell, usually cited AJ Arkell, ( born July 29, 1898 in Hinxhill, Kent; † February 26, 1980 in Chelmsford ) was a British Egyptologist and administrative official in Sudan.

Life and work

Arkell attended Bradfield College and studied at Queen's College, Oxford. He was in World War active in the British Royal Flying Corps and then in administrative services in Sudan, then a British colony. He also undertook archaeological expeditions in which he discovered, among other ancient ironworks in Meroe and legacies of the Badari predynastic culture of Upper Egypt. As a colonial civil servant, he ended the slave trade between Sudan and Ethiopia, and had built villages for the freed slaves.

In 1938 he received an official Bestallung as an archaeologist in Sudan. In 1948 he was curator of the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology and Professor of Egyptology at University College London. In 1963 he retired and became a pastor.

Writings

• History of the Sudan: from the earliest times to 1821, University of London. Athlone Press 1955, 2nd edition 1961, reprint Greenwood Press 1973
• Reviews of William Y. Adams Meroitic North and South. A study in cultural contrasts, Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1976
• The prehistory of the Nile valley, Brill, Leiden 1975
• Collaboration on Fischer World History, Volume 1