author
George Rawlinson
1812–1902
A Victorian scholar with a gift for making the ancient world readable, he wrote widely on Assyria, Persia, and the historical setting of the Bible. His books helped introduce generations of English readers to the great civilizations of the Near East.
9 Audiobooks
History of Phoenicia
by George Rawlinson
Ancient Egypt
by George Rawlinson, Arthur Gilman
About the author
Born in Chadlington, Oxfordshire, in 1812, George Rawlinson was an English scholar, historian, and Anglican clergyman. He studied at Trinity College, Oxford, earned a first in Literae Humaniores, and later became a fellow of Exeter College. He was also ordained and went on to hold academic and church posts, including the Camden Professorship of Ancient History at Oxford and a canonry at Canterbury.
Rawlinson is best remembered for his popular and ambitious works on the ancient world. He wrote histories of major empires including Assyria, Babylon, Media, and Persia, and he translated and edited classical texts such as Herodotus. His writing often aimed to connect ancient history with biblical and classical studies, making difficult material accessible to general readers as well as students.
He was the younger brother of Sir Henry Rawlinson, the noted Assyriologist, and the two men's interests partly overlapped in the growing nineteenth-century fascination with the ancient Near East. George Rawlinson died in 1902, leaving behind a body of work that reflects both the scholarship and the religious concerns of Victorian historical writing.