George Andrew Reisner

George Andrew Reisner (November 5, 1867 – June 6, 1942) was an American archaeologist of Ancient Egypt and Palestine.

George Andrew Reisner was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. His parents were George Andrew Reisner I and Mary Elizabeth Mason. His father’s parents were of German descent.

He married Mary Putnam Bronson, with whom he had a daughter, also called Mary.

In 1889, Reisner was head football coach at Purdue University, coaching for one season and compiling a record of 2–1.

Upon his studies at Jebel Barkal (The Holy Mountain), in Nubia he found the Nubian kings were not buried in the pyramids but outside of them. He also found the skull of a Nubian female (who he thought was a king) which is in the collection of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard. Reisner believed that Kerma was originally the base of an Egyptian governor and that these Egyptian rulers evolved into the independent monarchs of Kerma.

He also created a list of Egyptian viceroys of Kush. He found the tomb of Queen Hetepheres I, the mother of King Khufu (Cheops in Greek) who built the Great Pyramid at Giza. During this time he also explored mastabas. Arthur Merton, a fellow member of the Cairo Rotary Club, remarked in 1936 in the aftermath of the Abuwtiyuw discovery that Reisner "enjoys an unrivalled position not only as the outstanding figure in present-day Egyptology, but also as a man whose soundness of judgement and extensive general knowledge are widely conceded."

He met Queen Marie of Romania in Giza.

In Egypt, Reisner developed a new archaeological technique which became a standard in the profession, combining the British methods of Petrie, the German methods of Dorpfeld and Koldewey, his own American practicality and his skill for large-scale organization.

In 1908, after a decade in Egypt, Reisner headed the Harvard excavation of Samaria.

• 1897–1899: Classified Egyptology collection of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo
• 1899–1905: Led the Hearst Expedition of the University of California to explore burial grounds at and around Qift
• 1905: Edited The Hearst Medical Papyrus
• 1905–1914: Assistant professor of Egyptology at Harvard University
• 1907–1909: Directed archaeological survey of Nubia (Nilotic Sudan) for Egyptian government
• 1910–1942: Curator of Egyptian collections at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts
• 1914–1942: Professor of Egyptology at Harvard University
• 1916–1923: Explored pyramids of Meroë, dug out temple at Napata
• 1931: Wrote Mycerinus (alternative name of Menkaure)
• 1942: Published final work, A History of the Giza Necropolis

• Amulets. Cairo: Impr. de l'Institut français d'archéologie orientale. 1907.  (reprint ISBN 978-1-57898-718-4)
• Early dynastic cemeteries of Naga-ed-Dêr. Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs. 1908. 
• The Egyptian conception of immortality. Cambridge: The Riverside Press (Houghton Mifflin). 1912. 
• Excavations at Kerma. Cambridge: Peabody Museum of Harvard University. 1923.  (reprint ISBN 0-527-01028-6)
• Harvard excavations at Samaria, 1908-1910. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1924.  (with Clarence Stanley Fisher and David Gordon Lyon)
• Mycerinus, the temples of the third pyramid at Giza,. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1931. 
• The development of the Egyptian tomb down to the accession of Cheops. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1936. 
• A history of the Giza Necropolis. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1942. 
• Canopics. Cairo: Impr. de l'Institut français d'archéologie orientale. 1967.  (completed by Mohammad Hassan Abd-ul-Rahman)