David Jacob van Lennep (15 July 1774 – 1 February 1853) was Professor of Latin and Greek at the Athenaeum Illustre of Amsterdam, and a poet in Dutch and Neo-Latin.

Van Lennep attended a common nursery school, as his father advocated education without class differentiation.

In 1799 he succeeded Daniël Wyttenbach at the Athenaeum Illustre in Amsterdam as professor of Greek, Latin, history, rhetoric, and antiquities.

His debut, titled Carmina juvenilia ("Youth's poems"), was published by his father at the occasion of his school graduation in 1790.

Poematum fasciculus ("Small bundle of poems") was published in 1850, including the poem ‘Ad Villae Manpadicae arbores’, translated into Dutch by his son Jan Hendrik (‘Aan de bomen van het Manpad’, "At the trees of Manpad House").

Van Lennep was also an active poet in Dutch, and a member of the Leiden society Kunst Wordt Door Arbeid Verkreegen.

Through his love for country life, Van Lennep had a predilection for Hesiod's didactic poem Works and Days.

After Jean-François Champollion had deciphered the Egyptian hieroglyphs, he started studying Ancient Egypt and taught classes from the information then available.

Considered the first Dutch Egyptologist, he was an important influence on his student Caspar Reuvens,[2] later the world's first professor of Archaeology.

[3][4] When king Louis Bonaparte insisted he agreed to the position, and even gave the monarch Dutch language lessons at Het Loo Palace for a time.