Birch was the son of a
rector at St Mary Woolnoth, London. He was educated at
Merchant Taylors' School. From an early age, his manifest tendency to the study of out-of-the-way subjects well suited his later interest in archaeology. After brief employment in the Record Office, in 1836 he got a job working at the antiquities department of the
British Museum. He was 23 years old at the time, and was employed because he could read Chinese, which was unusual at that time. He soon broadened his research to
Egyptian. When the cumbrous department came to be divided, he was appointed to head the Egyptian and
Assyrian branch. In the latter language he had assistance, but for many years there was only one other person in the institution, in a different department, who knew anything of ancient Egyptian. The entire arrangement of the department devolved upon Birch. He found time nevertheless for Egyptological work of the highest value, including a
hieroglyphical grammar and
dictionary, translations of
The Book of the Dead and
papyrus Harris I, and numerous catalogues and guides. (east side) He further wrote what was long a standard history of
pottery, investigated the Cypriote syllabary, and proved by various publications that he had not lost his old interest in Chinese. Paradoxical in many of his views on things in general, he was sound and cautious as a
philologist; while learned and laborious, he possessed much of the instinctive divination of genius. His grandfather, also named
Samuel Birch, was a renowned dramatist and
Lord Mayor of London (1814). He was elected as a member of the
American Philosophical Society in 1869. He died on 27 December 1885 and is buried in
Highgate Cemetery. The headstone on his grave was sculpted by
George Gammon Adams. == Publications ==