John Gwyn Griffiths (7 December 1911 – 15 June 2004) was a Welsh poet, Egyptologist and nationalist political activist who spent the largest span of his career lecturing at Swansea University.

[2] At Cardiff Griffiths was influenced by Classicist Kathleen Freeman who kindled the interest in Egyptology that would dominate his scholarly career.

degree at Liverpool University on the influence of Ancient Egypt on Greek religion in the Mycenean period.

At Oxford, Griffiths met Käthe Bosse-Griffiths, a German-born refugee of German and Jewish ancestry, who shared academic and literary interests with him and was a scholar in Egyptology; later she became Keeper of Archaeology at Swansea Museum.

From 1957 to 1958 he was a Lady Wallis Budge Research Lecturer at University College, Oxford, and in 1959 he was promoted to a senior lectureship at Swansea, becoming reader in Classics in 1965.

Griffiths was also an important figure in the promotion of Welsh language in education and law, and on several occasions was arrested in nonviolent protests.

His later substantial books include The Origins of Osiris and his Cult (1980), Atlantis and Egypt (1991), The Divine Verdict (1991), and Triads and Trinity (1996) as well as contributing to The Cambridge History of Judaism (1999).