David George Hogarth Biography

British archaeologist and writer on the Middle East, born at Barton-on-Humber, educated at Winchester and at Magdalen College, Oxford. His early work in Asia Minor, Cyprus, Egypt, and elsewhere is described in the autobiographical Accidents of an Antiquary's Life (1910). The richly evocative descriptions of A Wandering Scholar in the Levant (1897) gained him the reputation as a travel writer which he maintained with The Nearer East (1902), The Penetration of Arabia (1904), Ionia and the East (1909), The Penetration of Arabia (1904), Ionia and the East (1909), and other works. Following a period as director of the British School of Archaeology in Athens, in 1900 he returned to Oxford, where he was Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum from 1908 till his death; his acquisitions for the museum reflected his interest in the Hittite civilization, on which he produced numerous books including Hittite Seals (1920) and Kings of the Hittites (1926). In 1915 he was sent on government service to Cairo, where he assumed great influence in the determination of British policy as director of the Arab Bureau; he recruited T. E. Lawrence, whom he had known and influenced at Oxford, into the Arabian Campaign. Among his other works are Excavations at Ephesus: The Archaic Artemisia (1908), The Ancient East (1914), and The Life of Charles M. Doughty (1928).