Rosalind L.B. Moss (1890–1990)

Rosalind L.B. (Louisa Beaufort) Moss was born in Shropshire, England. She was educated at Heathfield School, Ascot and then studied anthropology at the Society of Oxford Home Students, which later became St. Anne's College of Oxford University. She participated in archaeological digs at the Palaeolithic site of La Cotte de St. Brelade on the Isle of Jersey in 1914, directed by her tutor, ethnologist R.R. (Robert Ranulph) Marett. In 1917, she began to study Egyptology by attending classes given by Prof. F. Llewellen Griffith of Oxford and the British Museum, who had initiated the compilation of the massive reference work, Topographical Bibliography of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic Texts, Reliefs and Paintings. Bertha Porter served as the bibliographer on the project, but as she never left London, she used documents, photographs, and drawing as her source material. In 1924, she hired Rosalind Moss to do the field work and visit the monuments in Egypt and verify their contents, such as the temples at Kom Ombo and Edfu. Following the retirement of Miss Porter in 1929, Moss took over as bibliographer and supervised the publication of seven volumes of the Topographical Bibliography. She was elected as a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1949. The bibliography is commonly referred to as Porter & Moss. It continues to be produced in updated second editions and is one of the vital tools of Egyptology and Egyptian archaeology.