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- Sir Walter Elliot KCSI, FRS, LL.D (hon.)
- Also known as
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Sir Walter Elliot KCSI, FRS, LL.D (hon.)
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primary name: Elliot, Walter
- Details
- individual; official; curator; collector; archaeologist; British; Male
- Life dates
- 1803-1887
- Biography
- A Scottish civil servant in India (based in Madras), archaeologist, numistmatist and collector. He excavated at Amaravati in 1845 from which excavations come the majority of the Amaravati sculptures in the Museum. Some of his excavated pieces remain to this day in the collections of the Govt. Museum at Madras (Chennai). He presented his collection of Nilgiri Hills bronze vessels to the BM in 1882 and his South Indian coins in 1886. He was also interested in the botany of southern India; some of the drawings of tubers that he commissioned from local artists are preserved in the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh - see Noltie, H. J. 'Indian Botanical Drawings 1793-1868 from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh'. Edinburgh, 1999 pp. 25-26 and 72-74. For further details of his life, see DNB.
The Athenaeum (14 Aug 1886) review of the International Numismata Orientalia: "It is a matter of general felicitation that the only living scholar who has acquired a mastery over this perplexing subject [the coins of Southern India]
- Bibliography
- -John Allan, Guide to the Department of Coins and Medals, British Museum, London 1934..
-John Allan, 'The early history of the Department of Coins and Medals', BM Quarterly 1953, p.76.
-W Elliot, 'Coins of Southern India', The International Numismata Orientalia, London 1886.
-cf. also DNB, vol. XVII for his biography and bibliography and an obit. in the JRAS for July 1887