Campbell Cowan Edgar

Campbell Cowan Edgar (26 December 1870–10 May 1938) was a Scottish Egyptologist, classical archaeologist and papyrologist. He is especially noted for his work with A. S. Hunt on translating the Zenon Papyri. Between 1925 and 1927 he served as the Keeper of the Egyptian Museum at Cairo.

Early life Edgar was in Tongland, Kirkcudbrightshire, in south-west Scotland. His parents were Mary Sybilla Edgar (née Cowan, 1845–1928) and Rev Andrew Edgar (1830–1890), a Church of Scotland minister. They had nine children, among them Charles Samuel Edgar (1874–1945), Campbell's younger brother, who later became Professor of Greek at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. The family later moved to Mauchline in Ayrshire, where Campbell's father served as minister of Mauchline Parish Church.

Education The young Campbell was educated at Ayr Academy, before going on to study at Glasgow University 1887–91 under noted classical scholars Richard Claverhouse Jebb and Gilbert Murray. After graduating from Glasgow, Edgar studied classical archaeology at Oriel College, Oxford 1891–95. As a gifted student, he was awarded the Craven Fellowship in 1896 and went to continue his education in Greece at the British School at Athens, where he studied under Cecil Harcourt Smith.

Already a scholar of Classical Greece, C.C. Edgar began to specialise in the study of Hellenistic Egypt. In 1900 the Egyptian Government appointed him to work on the Catalogue général des antiquités égyptiennes du Musée du Caire of the Cairo Museum, and Edgar learned to read Egyptian hieroglyphics. Edgar's career in Egypt advanced, and in 1905 was appointed chief inspector of antiquities in the Nile Delta. Edgar took part in some important archaeological digs, including assisting David George Hogarth at the ancient city of Naukratis in 1903, and excavating the Tomb of Khesuwer at Kom el-Hisn in 1910.

In 1914, a hoard of ancient papyrus documents known as the Zenon Papyri was discovered in the Nile Valley, a cache of financial and legal records from the lost ancient city of Philadelphia. Together with fellow papyrologist Arthur Surridge Hunt, Edgar translated the documents from the original Greek and Demotic.