Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/422

 managed to complete the survey of about 500 square miles. On 8 Jan. 1882 he was promoted to be captain, and in March and April conducted Princes Albert Victor and George of Wales (now King George V) on a tour through the Holy Land. He wrote a report on the sacred Haram at Hebron and another on the Palestine tour for the information of the princes' father, King Edward VII, then Prince of Wales (printed in the Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement, 1882).

After his return home in June 1882, Conder joined the expedition to Egypt, under Sir Garnet Wolseley, to suppress the rebellion of Arabi Pasha. He was appointed a deputy assistant adjutant and quartermaster-general on the staff of the intelligence department. In Egypt his perfect knowledge of Arabic and of Eastern people proved most useful. He was present at the action of Kassassin, the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, and the advance to Cairo, but then, seized with typhoid fever, he was invalided home. For his services he received the war medal with clasp for Tel-el-Kebir, the Khedive's bronze star and the fourth class of the Order of the Medjidie. On recovering his health, Captain Conder devoted himself to plotting the survey and preparing the Memoir of Eastern Palestine. He published in 1883 'Heth and Moab,' a popular account of his second expedition to Palestine.

On 10 Nov. 1883 he took command of a depot company at Chatham. A year later, graded as deputy assistant adjutant and quartermaster-general in the intelligence department, he joined the staff of Major-general Sir Charles Warren in the Bechuanaland expedition to South Africa,and the topographical work was entrusted to him. He was mentioned in despatches and recommended for 'some recognition of good services.' Declining an offer of a land commissionership in South Africa, he returned to the command of his company at Chatham in October 1885. While there he published some important works: 'Syrian Stone Lore' (1886); 'The Canaanites' (1887); and 'Altaic Hieroglyphs and Hittite Inscriptions' (1887), where he proved his philological acumen and ingenuity.

On 1 July 1887 Conder went to Plymouth to work on the ordnance survey, and was transferred in the following April to Southampton to take charge of the engraving department. He remained there for seven years, receiving the thanks of the board of works for his introduction of double printing on copper plates. He assisted Sir Charles Wilson, then director-general of the ordnance survey, with the publications of the Palestine Pilgrims Text Society, of which Sir Charles was the director. In 1891 he published 'Palestine,' a resume of the history and geography of the country, and in 1893 he wrote 'The Tell Amarna Tablets,' a translation and description of letters in cuneiform character, written about 1480 B.C. from Palestine and Syria to the King of Egypt; they throw a flood of light on the connection between the countries.

Conder had been promoted major on 1 July 1888. After superintending the construction of the new defences for the naval base of Berehaven in 1894, he was engaged during 1895 in directing public works for the relief of distress in the congested districts of Ireland; and being promoted lieutenant-colonel on 12 Aug. 1895, was appointed commanding royal engineer at Weymouth. There he remained for five years and wrote some of his most important works. At Weymouth he was occupied with defence work in connection with the great naval base at Portland; fortifications, barracks, submarine mining, and electric searchlights all claimed his attention. He was promoted brevet colonel on 12 Aug. 1899, and a year later was placed on half pay. He was afterwards employed on the ordnance survey in the west of Ireland with headquarters at Ennis, co. Clare, until his retirement from the service on 2 Nov. 1904. Thenceforth he lived at Cheltenham, where he died on 16 Feb. 1910.

Conder married on 12 June 1877, at Guildford, Surrey, Myra Rachel, eldest daughter of Lieutenant-general Edward Archibald Foord (d. 1899) of the royal (Madras) engineers. She survived him with a daughter and a son.

Conder led a busy life, and although his services were invariably commended by those under whom he served he received little reward. In 1891, however, the University of Edinburgh made him honorary LL.D. A great Palestine explorer, he was one of several differing authorities on the Hittite and on the Altaic language. In 1893 he announced to the Royal Asiatic Society a discovery of what he claimed to be the clue to the Hittite inscriptions, but his claim was contested, and it is maintained that all suggested interpretations are based upon hypotheses at present incapable of verification.

Conder's industry as a writer was untiring, but his modesty deterred him from controversy with his critics. Apart from the works already mentioned, Conder