Sir Alan Henderson Gardiner, FBA (29 March 1879 – 19 December 1963) was an English Egyptologist, linguist, philologist, and independent scholar.

His father was Henry John Gardiner, a highly successful entrepreneur and businessman who made a considerable fortune in the drapery and wholesale linen trade in Bristol and London.

[1] His mother, Clara Elizabeth née Honey, died in his infancy and he and his elder brother, the composer H. Balfour Gardiner, were brought up by their father's housekeeper.

At school he developed an interest in ancient Egypt, and in 1895–96 he studied under the French archaeologist Gaston Maspero in Paris.

[2] In 1902 Gardiner moved to Berlin, to help gather material for Adolf Erman's projected Egyptian dictionary, serving as a sub-editor from 1906 to 1908.

[6] During his career, Gardiner obtained a number of academic honours, including DLitt from Oxford (1910), Fellow of the British Academy (1929),[2] election to the American Philosophical Society (1943),[7] an honorary DLitt from both Durham (1952) and Cambridge (1956),[6] and election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1957).