Hugh Evelyn-White

Hugh Gerard Evelyn-White (1884 – 9 September 1924) was a classicist, Egyptologist, Coptologist and archaeologist.

Life
Hugh Gerard Evelyn-White was born in Ipswich in 1884. He was the son of the antiquarian, Charles Harold Evelyn-White, and his wife, Charlotte Reid. Educated at The King's School, Ely, in 1907 he graduated with a degree in classics from Wadham College, Oxford. At Oxford he had studied under the classical archaeologist Percy Gardner. In 1909, he took a job at the British Museum as an assistant to Aurel Stein, working with central Asian artefacts.

Later in 1909, Evelyn-White took a post as a specialist in Greco-Roman antiquities on the annual expedition of the New York Metropolitan Museum to Egypt. He worked each year on the expedition until the First World War, when he joined the British Army. Initially, he signed up as an enlisted soldier in the 16th (Service) Battalion, Middlesex Regiment (Public Schools), but was invalidated out due to ill-health. He subsequently obtained an officer's commission and saw further service in Egypt and Palestine before again being invalided out in 1917. He worked on the excavations in Egypt until 1921, and he returned to England in 1922 to work at as a lecturer at the University of Leeds.

Evelyn-White made many translations of ancient Greek works, his most notable being those of Hesiod and the Homeric Hymns. He excavated at the Roman military site of Caerleon in 1909, at the Roman fort of Castell Collen in Radnorshire in 1913, and at Cawthorne Camp in 1924.

Evelyn-White died by suicide in 1924, at the age of forty. He shot himself in a taxi after the preceding suicide of a romantic interest.

Selected publications

 * Crum, W. E., & Evelyn-White, H. G. (1926). The monastery of Epiphanius at Thebes/Pt. 2 Coptic ostraca and papyri/ed. with translations and commentaries by WE Crum. The monastery of Epiphanius at Thebes.
 * Evelyn White, H. G. (1920). The Egyptian Expedition 1916-1919: IV. The Monasteries of the Wadi Natrun. Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 34–39.
 * Crum, W. E., & Evelyn-White, H. G. (1926). The monastery of Epiphanius at Thebes/Pt. 2 Coptic ostraca and papyri/ed. with translations and commentaries by WE Crum. The monastery of Epiphanius at Thebes.
 * Evelyn White, H. G. (1920). The Egyptian Expedition 1916-1919: IV. The Monasteries of the Wadi Natrun. Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 34–39.
 * Crum, W. E., & Evelyn-White, H. G. (1926). The monastery of Epiphanius at Thebes/Pt. 2 Coptic ostraca and papyri/ed. with translations and commentaries by WE Crum. The monastery of Epiphanius at Thebes.
 * Evelyn White, H. G. (1920). The Egyptian Expedition 1916-1919: IV. The Monasteries of the Wadi Natrun. Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 34–39.
 * Crum, W. E., & Evelyn-White, H. G. (1926). The monastery of Epiphanius at Thebes/Pt. 2 Coptic ostraca and papyri/ed. with translations and commentaries by WE Crum. The monastery of Epiphanius at Thebes.
 * Evelyn White, H. G. (1920). The Egyptian Expedition 1916-1919: IV. The Monasteries of the Wadi Natrun. Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 34–39.
 * Evelyn White, H. G. (1920). The Egyptian Expedition 1916-1919: IV. The Monasteries of the Wadi Natrun. Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 34–39.