Sir Peter le Page Renouf (August 23, 1822 - October 14, 1897), Egyptologist, was born in
GuernseyThe Bailiwick of Guernsey is a British Crown Dependency in the English Channel off the coast of Normandy.As well as the island of Guernsey itself, it also includes Alderney, Herm, Jethou, Brecqhou, Burhou, Lihou, Sark and other islets. Although the defence of all these islands is the...
.
He was educated at
Elizabeth CollegeElizabeth College is an independent school in the town of St Peter Port, Guernsey, founded in 1563 under the orders of Queen Elizabeth I- History :...
there, and proceeded to
OxfordThe University of Oxford , located in the UK city of Oxford, is the oldest surviving university in the English-speaking world and is regarded as one of the world's leading academic institutions. Although the exact date of foundation remains unclear, there is evidence of teaching there as far back...
, which, upon his becoming a Roman Catholic, under the influence of John Henry Newman, he quit without taking a degree as he was unable to subscribe to the Thirty Nine Articles as required in those days.
Like many other
AnglicanAnglicanism is a tradition within Christianity comprising churches with historical connections to the Church of England or similar beliefs, worship and church structures...
converts, he proved a thorn in the side of the Ultramontane party in the Roman Church, though he did not, like some of them, return to the communion of the
Church of EnglandThe Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England, the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion and the oldest among the communion's thirty-eight independent national and regional churches...
.
Sir Peter le Page Renouf (August 23, 1822 - October 14, 1897), Egyptologist, was born in
GuernseyThe Bailiwick of Guernsey is a British Crown Dependency in the English Channel off the coast of Normandy.As well as the island of Guernsey itself, it also includes Alderney, Herm, Jethou, Brecqhou, Burhou, Lihou, Sark and other islets. Although the defence of all these islands is the...
.
He was educated at
Elizabeth CollegeElizabeth College is an independent school in the town of St Peter Port, Guernsey, founded in 1563 under the orders of Queen Elizabeth I- History :...
there, and proceeded to
OxfordThe University of Oxford , located in the UK city of Oxford, is the oldest surviving university in the English-speaking world and is regarded as one of the world's leading academic institutions. Although the exact date of foundation remains unclear, there is evidence of teaching there as far back...
, which, upon his becoming a Roman Catholic, under the influence of John Henry Newman, he quit without taking a degree as he was unable to subscribe to the Thirty Nine Articles as required in those days.
Like many other
AnglicanAnglicanism is a tradition within Christianity comprising churches with historical connections to the Church of England or similar beliefs, worship and church structures...
converts, he proved a thorn in the side of the Ultramontane party in the Roman Church, though he did not, like some of them, return to the communion of the
Church of EnglandThe Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England, the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion and the oldest among the communion's thirty-eight independent national and regional churches...
. He opposed the promulgation of the
dogmaDogma is the established belief or doctrine held by a religion, ideology or any kind of organization: it is authoritative and not to be disputed, doubted or diverged from. The term derives from Greek "that which seems to one, opinion or belief" and that from , "to think, to suppose, to imagine"...
of
Papal InfallibilityPapal infallibility is the dogma in Catholic theology that, by action of the Holy Spirit, the Pope is preserved from even the possibility of error when he solemnly declares or promulgates to the universal Church a dogmatic teaching on faith or morals as being contained in divine revelation, or at...
, and his treatise (1868) upon the condemnation of
Pope HonoriusPope Honorius I was pope from 625 to 638.Honorius, according to the Liber Pontificalis, came from Campania and was the son of the consul Petronius. He became pope on October 27, 625, two days after the death of his predecessor, Boniface V...
for
heresyHeresy is proposing some unorthodox change to an established system of belief, especially a religion, that conflicts with the previously established opinion of scholars of that belief such as canon. It is sometimes confused with apostasy which is disaffiliation from orthodoxy and blasphemy which is...
by the council of Constantinople in
AD 680680 was a leap year of the 7th century.-Europe:* The Bulgars subjugate the country of current-day Bulgaria.* Pippin of Herstal becomes Mayor of the Palace.* Erwig deposes Wamba to become king of the Visigoths....
was placed upon the
index of prohibited booksThe Index Librorum Prohibitorum was a list of publications prohibited by the Roman Catholic Church.It was abolished on 14 June 1966 by Pope Paul VI....
.
He had been from 1855 to 1864 professor of ancient history and Oriental languages in the Roman Catholic university which Newman vainly strove to establish in
DublinDublin is the largest city and capital of Ireland. It is officially known in Irish as Baile Átha Cliath or Áth Cliath ; the English name comes from the Irish Dubh Linn meaning "black pool". It is located near the midpoint of Ireland's east coast, at the mouth of the River Liffey and at the...
, and during part of this period edited the
Atlantis and the
Home and Foreign Review, which latter had to be discontinued on account of the hostility of the Roman Catholic hierarchy.
In 1864 he was appointed a government inspector of schools, which position he held until 1886, when his growing celebrity as an Egyptologist procured him the appointment of Keeper of Oriental Antiquities in the
British MuseumThe British Museum is a museum of human history and culture situated in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from...
, in succession to
Dr Samuel BirchSamuel Birch was a British Egyptologist and antiquary.Birch was the son of a rector at St Mary Woolnoth, London. From an early age, his manifest tendency to the study of out-of-the-way subjects well suited his later interest in archaeology...
. His understudy was
E. A. Wallis BudgeSir Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge was an English Egyptologist, Orientalist, and philologist who worked for the British Museum and published numerous works on the ancient Near East.-Earlier life:...
with whom he had an acrimonious relationship. He didn't want Budge to succeed him as keeper, through a perceived lack of social skills (Budge didn't come from a privileged background) and doubts about his abilities, objecting strongly to Budge being appointed as his successor and preferring
Edouard NavilleCaptaine Henri Édouard Naville was a Swiss egyptologist. He studied in London, Paris and Berlin .He first journeyed to Egypt in 1865, and published the myths of Horus from the temple at Edfu in 1870....
instead.
Renouf was elected in 1887 president of the
Society of Biblical ArchaeologyThe Society of Biblical Archaeology was founded in London in 1870 to further Biblical archaeology. It published a series of Proceedings in which some important papers read before the Society were preserved....
, to whose
Proceedings he was a constant contributor.
Renouf was removed from his position as Keeper in the British Museum on reaching retirement age despite the signed opposition of twenty-five leading European Egyptologists of the day who wrote to the
Prime MinisterA prime minister is the most senior minister of cabinet in the executive branch of government in a parliamentary system. The position is usually held by, but need not always be held by, a politician. In many systems, the prime minister selects and can dismiss other members of the cabinet, and...
. Renouf gave excoriating evidence against Budge in court when the latter was found to have falsely accused
Hormuzd RassamHormuzd Rassam was an Assyriologist and traveller who made a number of important discoveries, including the stone tablets that contained the Epic of Gilgamesh, the world's oldest literature...
of being corruptly involved in illicit trade of cuneiform tablets. Renouf continued to feel animosity towards Budge, accusing him of plagiarism and being a charlatan.
The most important of his contributions to Egyptology are his Hibbert Lectures on
The Religion of the Egyptians, delivered in 1879; and the translation of
The Book of the Deadthumb|400px|This detail scene, from the Papyrus of Hunefer , shows Hunefer's heart being weighed on the scale of [[Maat]] against the feather of truth, by the jackal-headed [[Anubis]]. The Ibis-headed [[Thoth]], scribe of the gods, records the result. If his heart is lighter than the feather,...
, with an ample commentary, published in the
Transactions of the society over which he presided. He retired from the Museum under the superannuation rule in 1891 and was knighted for services to the British Museum in 1896.
He died in London on the 14th of October 1897. He married in 1857 Ludovica von Brentano, member of a well-known German literary family. His letters show unstinting praise for Renouf's scholarship from all the leading Egyptologists of his day.