T. Eric (Thomas Eric) Peet

Born in Liverpool in 1882, Thomas Eric Peet studied at Merchant Taylors’ School, Crosby, and at The Queen’s College, Oxford, where he worked in mathematics and classics before turning fully toward archaeology and Egyptology. Early research in Rome and then excavation in Egypt helped shape the practical, hands-on scholarship that became the core of his career.

From 1909 onward he took part in important excavations in Egypt, including work at Abydos and elsewhere for the Egypt Exploration Fund. He later taught Egyptology at the University of Manchester and went on to become reader in Egyptology at Oxford. Alongside his academic work, he also served in the First World War.

Peet wrote for both specialists and general readers, with books and studies on Egyptian history, literature, archaeology, and the ancient world’s links with the Bible and the wider Near East. He died in Oxford in 1934, but he remains remembered as one of the energetic British Egyptologists of the early twentieth century.