Ricardo Augusto Caminos (c. 1916 – May 28, 1992) was an

Argentine Argentines (mistakenly translated Argentineans in the past; in Spanish (masculine) or (feminine)) are people identified with the country of Argentina. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Argentines, s ...

Egyptologist focused on

epigraphy Epigraphy () is the study of inscriptions, or epigraphs, as writing; it is the science of identifying graphemes, clarifying their meanings, classifying their uses according to dates and cultural contexts, and drawing conclusions about the wr ...

and

paleography Palaeography ( UK) or paleography ( US; ultimately from grc-gre, , ''palaiós'', "old", and , ''gráphein'', "to write") is the study of historic writing systems and the deciphering and dating of historical manuscripts, including the analysi ...

. Caminos was born in

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...

and had a brother Hugo and sister Helena. As a child he was fascinated by ancient history, and went on to obtain his undergraduate degree and M.A. (1938) from the

University of Buenos Aires The University of Buenos Aires ( es, Universidad de Buenos Aires, UBA) is a public university, public research university in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Established in 1821, it is the premier institution of higher learning in the country and one o ...

. After studying for PhD's from both

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

and the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

's Oriental Institute, Chicago, he worked on number of Egyptian and Sudanese excavations, including those about to be flooded by the construction on the

Aswan Dam The Aswan Dam, or more specifically since the 1960s, the Aswan High Dam, is one of the world's largest embankment dams, which was built across the Nile in Aswan, Egypt, between 1960 and 1970. Its significance largely eclipsed the previous Aswan L ...

. Around 1952 he was hired by

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

, and in 1972 he became the chairman of the Egyptology department, retiring in 1980. He then moved to

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

where he conducted research at the nearby Egypt Exploration Society. His former home in London now serves as the Ricardo A. Caminos Memorial Library of the Egypt Exploration Society, and contains approximately 20,000 books, journals, and pamphlets on Egyptology.

Works

* * * * (with T. G. H. James) * * * *

References

*James, T.G.H., "Ricardo Caminos," ''Journal of Egyptian Archaeology'' 79 (1993), 226-35. * 1910s births 1992 deaths Argentine Egyptologists 20th-century Argentine historians Argentine male writers Writers from Buenos Aires Male non-fiction writers Argentine expatriates in the United Kingdom Argentine expatriates in the United States {{Argentina-historian-stub