Henrietta Lawes grew up in a comfortable home in Berkshire; her father was a successful miller and owned Caversham Mill in Caversham.<\/p>\n
It is unclear where her interest in ancient Egypt originated but in 1899, age 38, she joined Hilda Petrie and Flinders Petrie in Egypt to take part in excavations at Hu (Hiu), the site of an ancient city known as Diospolis Parva.\u00a0 Many graves were uncovered during the excavations. Flinders Petrie’s journals, now in the Griffith Institute at Oxford University, indicate that she and fellow Hu team-member Beatrice Orme<\/a> were responsible for marking skeletons and pots, drawing pots, and being informal collections-managers in the field.<\/p>\n On her death, Henrietta Lawes left a number of ancient Egyptian artefacts to the Museum of Greek Archaeology at Reading; she also donated ancient Egyptian artefacts to the Reading Museum.<\/p>\n