The dragon roars: Wales and Egyptology

Students of Egyptology of Welsh origin have featured prominently in the history of the subject for more than two centuries. I have sometimes been asked why that should be so, and my default reply has usually been that it was the influence of the Nonconformist tradition and the diligent reading of the Bible which went with it. But, while this factor may well have played a part in Wales, its effects will not have been confined to Wales, and we need to dig a little deeper for answers. A painting of a vulture ceiling by E H Jones, in the Theodore Davis publication Tomb of Siphtah (1908). Travellers Egyptophiles of Welsh origin, born in the 18th or the first half of the 19th century