Sir Harold Idris Bell CB OBE (2 October 1879 – 22 January 1967) was a British museum curator, papyrologist (specialising in Roman Egypt) and scholar of Welsh literature.

[5] He retired in 1944, and in 1946 he went to live at Aberystwyth, naming his house Bro Gynin, a sign of his respect for the poet Dafydd ap Gwilym.

[1] Bell was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 1920 civilian war honours for his wartime services as editor of the Food Supplement of the Daily Review of the Foreign Press.

He was elected corresponding member of several Continental and American learned societies, and was awarded honorary degrees by the Universities of Wales, Liverpool, Michigan and Brussels.

[9] His son, David Bell, with whom he translated the works of Dafydd ap Gwilym in 1942, was the curator of the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery in Swansea.