Alice Grenfell

Alice Grenfell or Alice Pyne (1842 – 8 August 1917) was a British suffrage organiser and honorary secretary of the Women's Progressive Society. In later life she became an expert on ancient Egyptian scarabs.

Alice Grenfell
Born
Alice Pyne

1842
Died8 August 1917
NationalityBritish
Known forstudy of Scarabs from ancient Egypt
ChildrenBernard Pyne Grenfell

Life

Grenfell married John Granville Grenfell. Their son, Bernard, was born in Birmingham but he was brought up and educated at Clifton College in Bristol, where John taught.[1]

Grenfell was active in the suffrage movement.[1] She was in America in 1888 attending the inaugural meeting of the International Council of Women in Washington with Susan B. Anthony.[2] She became the honorary secretary of the Women's Progressive Society.[3]

Grenfell served on a school board for three years.[1]

Grenfell went to live with her son after her husband died in 1897. Her son was a leading papyrologist working with Arthur Surridge Hunt. She took a great interest in her son's work and in particular Egyptian Scarab shaped artifacts.[1] She taught herself to read hieroglyphics and published her own papers including, The Iconography of Bes, and of Phoenician Bes-Hand Scarabs in 1902.[4] She created a catalogue of the Grenfell family's and the scarab collection belonging to Queen's College.[1] This collection had been left to the college by Robert Mason but it had been gathered by the Italian explorer Giovanni Battista Belzoni.[5]

In 1908, he became professor of papyrology at Oxford, however he was ill and she cared for him for four years. During that time the professorship lapsed. He had recovered by 1913.[1] Grenfell died in Oxford in 1917.

Her son died on 18 May 1926, and was buried in Holywell Cemetery, Oxford.[6]

Works include

  • The Iconography of Bes, and of Phoenician Bes-Hand Scarabs, 1902[4]
  • The Grenfell Collection of Scarabs, 1916[7]

References

  1. Bell, H. (2004-09-23). Grenfell, Bernard Pyne (1869–1926), papyrologist. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved 18 Jan. 2018, See link
  2. International Council of Women (1888). Report of the International Council of Women: Assembled by the National ... Harvard University. R. H. Darby, printer.
  3. Oliver Janz; Daniel Schönpflug (30 April 2014). Gender History in a Transnational Perspective: Networks, Biographies, Gender Orders. Berghahn Books. pp. 81–. ISBN 978-1-78238-275-1.
  4. Alice Grenfell (1902). The Iconography of Bes, and of Phoenician Bes-Hand Scarabs. Society of biblical archaeology.
  5. Grenfell, Alice (1915). "The Scarab Collection of Queen's College, Oxford". The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology. 2 (4): 217–228. doi:10.2307/3853475. JSTOR 3853475.
  6. Bell H I, 'Bernard Pyne Grenfell'. Archived 26 February 2010 at the Wayback Machine In JRH Weaver (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography 1922 - 1930. Oxford University Press
  7. Alice Grenfell (1916). The Grenfell Collection of Scarabs.
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