Henry George Lyons 1864-1944 / [H.H. Dale].

  • Henry Hallett Dale
Date:
1944
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Henry George Lyons 1864-1944 / [H.H. Dale]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Sand; and it may be supposed that this resulted in his publication of his first scientific paper, on ‘London Clay and Bagshot Beds’ (Q. #. Geol. Soc. 1887) at the age of twenty-three years. The first of the main phases of Lyons’s career began in January 1890, when he was posted to a Company of Royal Engineers at Cairo. Here, again, we find him using his spare time for a study of the Geology of the country accessible to him, and employing periods of short leave in journeys to Suez, to the Eastern Desert, to the Coptic Monasteries, and to the Baharia Oasis in the Western Desert. In October 1891 he was transferred to the Egyptian Army and posted as Engineer Officer on the Staff at Wady Halfa, where he continued to use all the time he could spare from formal duties for further studies in Geology and Egyptology, to which his interests had now extended. In October 1892 Lyons was ordered to Cairo to become Assistant Quarter Master General on Sir H. H. Kitchener’s staff, when the latter became Sirdar. Being sent on patrol in the Western Desert to the oases of Khanga and Dakhla and later, in 1895, to the Nubian Desert, to inspect the caravan routes and the water supplies available, Lyons continued to use the opportunities afforded by such journeys for scientific observations, being provided for some of these with instruments lent by the Royal Society on the recommendation of Sir Arthur W. Riicker. Between 1895 and 1896 he was sent to Aswan to examine the stability of the temples on the river islet of Philae, above the first cataract of the Nile. The work was needed in view of the Barrage scheme then about to be undertaken, which would cause the temples to be submerged, except for the few months in the year when the water would be allowed to flow freely through the sluices of the projected Aswan dam. As the result of Lyons’s survey and report, the island and the temples were cleared of much debris of native building, remains of Christian churches were disclosed, and the walls and foundations of the stone structures were all repaired and strengthened before the dam was completed; and although the temples are now submerged except for the months from July to October, it is said that the process is actually beneficial to the stonework, in that it regularly removes disintegrating salts and incrustations. It seems clear that this, the first of Lyons’s undertakings to attract some measure of public notice, was done with the quiet efficiency which, in later years, those who were associated with him in any of his enter- prises came to take for granted. His Report to the Public Works Ministry on Islands and Temples of Philae brought him a reputation among archaeologists, as well as among engineers and administrators. In July 1896, still holding his active rank in the R.E., Lyons was transferred from the Egyptian Army to the Ministry of Public Works, to organize a Geological Survey of Egypt, and was thus given, in the course of his military duty, a first full-time opportunity to carry out and to plan research in the department of science which had so early caught his interest and so long occupied the activities of his leisure, though he had had no opportunity of academic or other formal training in it. The new appointment practically coincided with another event, which was to have a central importance in the
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