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Reginald Stuart Poole

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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REGINALD STUART POOLE (1832-1895), English archaeologist and orientalist, was born in London on the 27th of January 1832. His father was the Rev. Edward Poole, a wellknown bibliophile. His mother, Sopha, authoress of The Englishwoman in Egypt (1844), was the sister of E. W. Lane, the Arabic scholar, with whom R. S. Poole lived in Cairo from 1842 to 1849, thus imbibing an early taste for Egyptian antiquities. In 1852 he became an assistant in the British Museum, and was assigned to the department of coins and medals, of which in 1870 he became keeper. In that capacity he did work of the highest value, alike as a writer, teacher and administrator. In 1882 he was largely responsible for founding the Egypt Exploration Fund, and in 1884 for starting the Society of English Medallists. He retired in 1893, and died on the 8th of February 1895. Some of Poole's best work was done in his articles for the Ency. Brit. (9th ed.) on Egypt, Hieroglyphics and Numismatics, and considerable portions have been retained in the present edition, even though later research has been active in his sphere of work; he also wrote for Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, and published several volumes dealing with his special subjects. He was for some time professor of archaeology at University College, London, and also lecturer at the Royal Academy.

His elder brother, Edward Stanley Poole (1830-1867), who was chief clerk in the science and art department at South Kensington, was an Arabic scholar, whose early death cut short a promising career. His two sons, Stanley Lane-Poole (b. 1854), professor of Arabic in Trinity College, Dublin, and Reginald Lane-Poole (b. 1857), keeper of the archives at Oxford, lecturer in diplomatic, and author of various historical works, carried on the family tradition of scholarship.