Reginald Campbell Thompson

Reginald Campbell Thompson (21 August 1876 – 23 May 1941) was a British archaeologist, Assyriologist and cuneiformist. He excavated at Nineveh, Ur, Nebo, Carchemish and other sites.

Reginald Campbell Thompson
Portrait by Walter Stoneman, 1934
Born	(1876-08-21)21 August 1876 London, England
Died	23 May 1941(1941-05-23) (aged 64) Moulsford, Berkshire, England
Resting place	St Leonard's Churchyard, Sunningwell, Berkshire
Education	Colet Court, St Paul's School
Alma mater	Caius College, Cambridge
Known for	Excavations at Nineveh
Spouse	Barbara Brodrick Robinson ​ ​ (m. 1911)​
Children	3
Scientific career
Fields	Archaeology Assyriology cuneiform

Biography

Thompson was born at Cranley Place, South Kensington, the eldest of five children of Dr. Reginald Edward Thompson (1834-1912) and Anne Isabella De Morgan,^[1] and educated at Colet Court, St Paul's School and Caius College, Cambridge, where he read oriental (Hebrew and Aramaic) languages.

Bronze head of an Akkadian king unearthed in Nineveh by Campbell Thompson's team

In 1904 he found the remains of the temple of Nabu in Nineveh,^[2] which were destroyed in 2016 by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

In 1918 Mesopotamia became a possession of the UK, and the trustees of the British Museum applied to have an archaeologist attached to the army in the field to protect antiquities from harm. As a captain in the Intelligence Service serving in the region and a former assistant of the British Museum, R. C. Thompson was commissioned to start the work. After a brief investigation of Ur, he dug at Shahrain and the mounds at Tell al-Lahm.

After the First World War he had a fellowship with Merton College, Oxford.^[3] Thompson was a member of the Royal Asiatic Society, and left to them two canisters of film. "The footage dates from the late 1920s/early 1930s and shows excavations in Iraq at the mound of Kouyunjik, scenes in the village of Nebi Yunus, across the Khosr river from Kouyunjik within the ancient city boundaries of Nineveh, and scenes in the city of Mosul, across the river Tigris from Nineveh". The film was digitised in 2016.^[1]

The writer Agatha Christie and her husband the archaeologist Max Mallowan were invited by Thompson to the excavation site at Nineveh in 1931.^[4] She dedicated her story Lord Edgware Dies to "Dr and Mrs Campbell Thompson". In return he dedicated his melodrama in blank verse Digger's Fancy to "Agatha and Max Mallowan".^[5]

Appointments

• 1899-1905 Assistant in the Egyptian and Assyrian Dept. of the British Museum.
• 1906 Sudan Survey Dept.
• 1907-9 Assistant Professor in Semitic Languages, University of Chicago.
• 1914-19 Served in Mesopotamia (Captain, Special List; mentioned four times in despatches).
• 1923-41 Fellow of Merton College, Oxford.
• 1937-41 Shillito Reader in Assyriology at Oxford.

Personal life

Reginald Campbell Thompson married Barbara Brodrick Robinson at St John’s, Putney on 19 September 1911. They had three children: Yoland(e) in 1914, Reginald Perronet in 1919 and John De Morgan in 1923. Reginald Perronet was a Flight Lieutenant in the Royal Air Force Reserves (RAFVR), and was killed on active service on 4 April 1941.^[6] A memorial service was held at New College, Oxford on 14 June 1941.^[7]

Reginald died on 23 May 1941 at Sowberry Court, Moulsford, aged 64. He lost his life while serving in the Home Guard, during a patrol on the River Thames.^[6] His obituary in The Times said of him "Personally Thompson was of a fine, robust build, who could shoot, swim or sail a boat with anybody. The Norfolk broads were a haunt of his at one time, and at Oxford he kept a skiff of his own on the river".^[8]

Barbara accompanied her husband on site for all four seasons of work at Nineveh.^[1] She died on 25 June 1971, aged 84. Reginald, Barbara and their first son are buried at Sunningwell, close to the family home at Boars Hill.

Bibliography

• The Reports of the Magicians and Astrologers of Nineveh and Babylon. Two volumes. London, Luzac and Co., 1900.
• On Traces of an Indefinite Article in Assyrian. London, David Nutt, 1902.
• The Devils and Evil Spirits of Babylonia, 2 vols. London, Luzac, 1903–1904.
• Late Babylonian Letters: Transliterations and Translations of a Series of Letters Written in Babylonian Cuneiform, Chiefly during the Reigns of Nabonidus, Cyrus, Cambyses, and Darius. London, Luzac, 1906.
• Semitic Magic: its Origins and Development. London, 1908.
• A Pilgrim's Scrip;. London, John Lane The Bodley Head, 1915.
• Archaeologia, Vol LXX (1921)
• Assyrian Medical Texts: from the Originals in the British Museum. London, Oxford University Press, 1923.
• The Assyrian Herbal. London, Luzac and Co., 1924.
• A Century of Exploration at Nineveh. London, Luzac, 1929. Joint author: Richard Wyatt Hutchinson.
• The Epic of Gilgamish, text, transliteration and notes, 1930.^[9]
• The Prisms of Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal found at Nineveh, 1927-8. London, British Museum, 1931
• A Dictionary of Assyrian Chemistry and Geology. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1936

Fiction

• A Song of Araby (1921 as John Guisborough)
• A Mirage of Sheba (1923 as John Guisborough)
• Digger's Fancy: a Melodrama. London, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1938.

References

1. "Reginald Campbell Thompson and the Nineveh Project". Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. Retrieved 25 March 2023.
2. British Museum: Reginald Campbell Thompson
3. Levens, R.G.C., ed. (1964). Merton College Register 1900–1964. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. p. 156.
4. McCall, Henrietta. "British Museum: Agatha Christie and Archaeology". Archived from the original on 27 September 2011. Retrieved 15 December 2011.
5. "Archaeologists in Print".
6. Kinnear, Jennifer (11 November 2020). "Archive Report: Allied Forces". Aircrew Remembered. Retrieved 26 March 2023.
7. "Memorial Service: Members of New College, Oxford, who have Lost their Lives in the War". The Times. London. 17 June 1941. p. 7.
8. "A leading Assyriologist". The Times. London. 6 May 1941. p. 6.
9. The epic can be read at Getty, Laura; Kwon, Kyounghye (4 October 2019). "1.2: The Epic of Gilgamesh". LibreTexts Humanities. Retrieved 29 March 2024.

Sources

• British Museum collections
• Harry Reginald Holland Hall, A season's work at Ur, Al-'Ubaid, Abu Shahrain (Eridu) and Elsewhere, Being an Unofficial Account of the British Museum Archaeological Mission to Babylonia, 1919, Methuen, 1930.

External links

• British Museum biography
• Short biography by K. Kris Hirst
• British Academy Obituary