[2] He was educated at Adams' Grammar School in Newport and Christ Church, Oxford.

He became fascinated by the antiquities, and offered himself as a pupil to Professor Flinders Petrie, with whom he worked at Coptos in 1893, then at Nagada, Ballas, Thebes, El Kab, and Hierakonpolis in successive years, including the Ramesseum.

Between 1914 and 1923, he was a keeper in the Cairo Museum, and served as director of excavations at the Djoser Step Pyramid between 1931 and 1935.

[citation needed] After six months' study at the Humboldt University of Berlin he was appointed to the Catalogue Commission of the Egyptian Museum, and in 1899 as an inspector on the staff of the Antiquities Department, a colleague being Howard Carter.

He worked at Saqqara, in the Valley of the Kings (where he discovered the tomb of Yuya and Thuya in 1905), and at Hierakonpolis (ancient Nekhen), where amongst other discoveries his team found the Narmer Palette in 1898.