Arthur Hamilton Smith was born on 2 October 1860 and was the fourth son of the mathematician Archibald Smith (1813-1872) and his wife Susan (1835/6-1913), daughter of Sir James Parker; his five brothers included Sir James Parker Smith and Sir Henry Babington Smith. After attending Dr Spyer's school at Weybridge, he was a scholar at Winchester College (1874-1879); renouncing a nomination to the Indian Civil Service, he then went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, obtaining a second class in part one of the classical tripos (1881) and a first class in part two (1883) with special distinction in archaeology. In 1882 he became a member of the Apostles Society.
He travelled in Greece, Italy and Sicily in 1884 before joining an expedition, in Asia Minor with the archaeologist William Mitchell Ramsay; he was however forced to leave early due to ill health. In 1885 he travelled to Egypt; afterwards he entered the department of Greek and Roman antiquities in the British Museum in April 1886, under Sir Charles Newton and then Alexander Stuart Murray. With Murray, he produced the "Catalogue of Engraved Gems" (1888) and "White Athenian Vases" (1896); the latter included reproductions by the 'cyclograph' he designed himself for the photographing of cylindrical surfaces, which earned him a gold medal at the Berlin photographic exhibition in 1896. The "Catalogue of Sculpture" (3 vols., 1892–1904), and the "Guide" to the department (first edition 1899) were his sole work. In 1893-1894 and 1896 he joined excavations in Cyprus under Murray's direction, undertaken thanks to a bequest from Emma Tournour Turner; these were written up by Murray, Smith, and Henry Beauchamp Walters (1900). He also published catalogues of classical items in the Lansdowne (1889), Yarborough (1897), and Woburn Abbey (1900) collections. Smith became assistant keeper of the department in 1904, and keeper from the beginning of 1909; he was therefore responsible for the successful safeguarding of the collections during the First World War; his further publications include an article on the Parthenon Sculptures ("Lord Elgin and his collection", Journal of Hellenic Studies, 36, 1916, p163–372), published to mark the centenary of their acquisition, and seeking to defend Elgin from the criticisms of Byron and others.
His main professional activities outside the Museum were in connection for the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, being a member of the council from 1887 onwards, and successively serving as joint editor of the journal, librarian, vice-president and, from 1924-1929, president He was also vice-president of the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies, and was associated with the Byzantine Research Fund. He retired from the British Museum in October 1925, serving as director of the British School at Rome, for which he had been chairman of the faculty of Archæology, History, and Letters from 1922, between 1928-1930 and again in 1932. He was elected fellow of the Society of Antiquities in 1893 and of the British Academy in 1924, and an honorary associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1925; he was also corresponding member of the German and Austrian archaeological institutes. He was an honorary member of the Art-Workers' Guild and of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society. In 1926 he was appointed CB.
Smith married Gertrude Prudence Blomfield (1870–1961), daughter of Rev. Blomfield Jackson, on 28 April 1897; they had one daughter, Elizabeth (1899-1987). They lived in Bloomsbury, from 1912 in an official residence in the British Museum; they moved to Weybridge, Surrey in 1932 and Smith died there on 28 September 1941.
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