Arthur Cowley

Sir Arthur Ernest Cowley, (13 December 1861 – 12 October 1931) was a British librarian who was Bodley's Librarian (head of the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford) from 1919 until a couple of months before his death. He was also a leading Semitic scholar.

Early life and career Cowley was the fourth son (and one of seventeen children) of a customs house agent and his wife from Sydenham in South London. and was awarded a D.Litt. by the university in 1908. In 1912 he gave the annual Sandars Lectures in bibliography at the University of Cambridge, choosing as his subject the Elephantine papyri. He left a reputation of having been a "great pioneer" of Elephantine studies.

Works , edited and enlarged by Emil Kautzsch, translated from German by Arthur Ernest Cowley Edited, with translation and notes. By A. Cowley