It’s not surprising that George Reisner (1867–1942) loved detective stories, eventually bequeathing his collection of 1,300 whodunits to Harvard University. Passionately painstaking, he devoted himself to documenting his excavations with detailed site maps, complicated cross-sections and the latest photographic techniques. Born in Indianapolis, Reisner earned his Ph.D. from Harvard by 1893. The following year he left for Germany, where he served as an assistant in the Egyptian department of the Berlin Museum. In 1899 Phoebe Apperson Hearst (mother of newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst) funded a Reisner-led excavation of the early dynastic cemeteries at Naga ed-Deir, about 300 miles […]
