William Leonard Stevenson Loat (born Norwood, Surrey 15 October 1871- died Treclome,

Mevagissey Mevagissey (; kw, Lannvorek) is a village, fishing port and civil parish in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom.

Cornwall Cornwall (; kw, Kernow ) is a historic county and ceremonial county in South West England. It is recognised as one of the Celtic nations, and is the homeland of the Cornish people. Cornwall is bordered to the north and west by the Atlantic ...

, 10 April 1932), the son of William L. and Marianna Eliza Stevenson. was a

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

archaeologist, naturalist and collector. Many of the objects he had collected from China, Egypt, Peru, Africa, Australia, Assam, Polynesia and North America were bequeathed to the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

in 1920 while her also donated some Australian items to the Plymouth City Museum. He often worked on excavations with

Flinders Petrie Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie ( – ), commonly known as simply Flinders Petrie, was a British Egyptologist and a pioneer of systematic methodology in archaeology and the preservation of artefacts. He held the first chair of Egyp ...

, as well as being a member of the Egypt Excavation Fund. At some point he directed the excavations at Abydos. He first travelled to Egypt in 1899 as an assistant to the

zoologist Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and d ...

George Albert Boulenger of the

British Museum (Natural History) The Natural History Museum in London is a museum that exhibits a vast range of specimens from various segments of natural history. It is one of three major museums on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, the others being the Science Museum an ...

on an ichthyological survey of the

Nile The Nile, , Bohairic , lg, Kiira , Nobiin: Áman Dawū is a major north-flowing river in northeastern Africa. It flows into the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile is the longest river in Africa and has historically been considered the longest ...

. Later he took part in excavations at Gurob in 1903 for Petrie and at Abydos for the Egypt Excavation Fund in 1908-9 and 1912–13, He was responsible for finding and publishing a description of the Ibis Cemetery. The outbreak of the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

in 1914 meant that he had to cease working in Egypt. He then married and took residence at Mevagissy, Cornwall where he pursued an interest in

horticulture Horticulture is the branch of agriculture that deals with the art, science, technology, and business of plant cultivation. It includes the cultivation of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, herbs, sprouts, mushrooms, algae, flowers, seaweeds and no ...

. He travelled to the Andes in 1927 and during the 1920s he presented some Egyptian objects to the Penzance Museum. Loat is honoured in the specific names of at least two species of fish, '' Micropanchax loati'' a

killifish A killifish is any of various oviparous (egg-laying) cyprinodontiform fish (including families Aplocheilidae, Cyprinodontidae, Fundulidae, Profundulidae and Valenciidae). All together, there are 1,270 species of killifish, the biggest family ...

he collected at

Lake No Lake No is a lake in South Sudan. It is located just north of the vast swamp of the Sudd, at the confluence of the Bahr al Jabal and Bahr el Ghazal rivers, and marks the transition between the Bahr al Jabal and White Nile proper. Lake No is lo ...

in South Sudan and the cichlid '' Haplochromis loati'' which Loat collected at

Gondokoro Gondokoro island is located in Central Equatoria. The island was a trading-station on the east bank of the White Nile in Southern Sudan, south of Khartoum. Its importance lay in the fact that it was within a few kilometres of the limit of naviga ...

in South Sudan, in 1902. He received the 4th class of the Imperial Ottoman

Order of Osmanieh The Order of Osmanieh or Order of Osmaniye ( ota, نشانِ عثمانیہ) was a civil and military decoration of the Ottoman Empire. History The order was created in January 1862 by Sultan Abdülaziz. With the obsolescence of the Nişan-i ...

in 1902, conferred by the

Khedive of Egypt The Khedivate of Egypt ( or , ; ota, خدیویت مصر ') was an autonomous tributary state of the Ottoman Empire, established and ruled by the Muhammad Ali Dynasty following the defeat and expulsion of Napoleon Bonaparte's forces which brou ...

for work that year on making a collection of

fish for the Egyptian government.

Publications

The following is an incomplete list of publications authored by Loat: *1904 ''Gurob'' Publications of the Egyptian Research Account and British School of Archaeology in Egypt *1913 (with Thomas Eric Peet) ''The Cemeteries of Abydos. Part III.-1912-1913'' Egypt Exploration Fund *1914 ''The Ibis cemetery at Abydos'' Egypt Exploration Society

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Loat, William Leonard Stevenson British archaeologists 1871 births 1932 deaths