Renouf, Peter le Page (1822–97), church historian and Egyptologist, was born 23 August 1822 in St Peter Port, Guernsey, the eldest child of Joseph Renouf, Master of the Town Hospital school in St Peter Port, and his wife Mary (née le Page). His brother Frederick drowned at sea in 1844 and his sister Louisa died in 1880. Two other siblings died in infancy. He was educated at Elizabeth College, Guernsey, where he won many prizes. In March 1840 he presented himself for examination at Pembroke College, Oxford, and was awarded a scholarship to study theology there. At the beginning of his second year in Oxford, he published anonymously a pamphlet on The Doctrine of the catholic church in England on the Eucharist. In March 1842 his parents were shocked and upset when he informed them of his intention to become a Roman catholic. Unable to remain at Oxford because he no longer subscribed to the Thirty-Nine Articles, he moved to St Mary's College, Oscott, at the invitation of Bishop (later Cardinal) Nicholas Wiseman. He was employed as a tutor at Oscott and studied philosophy and theology. He continued the study of Hebrew, Syriac and Ethiopic, and took up Arabic as well. Intensely interested in the history of early Christianity, he wrote several excellent and substantial review articles for the Dublin Review. In August 1846 Renouf moved to Besançon in France where he was employed as a tutor for the son of the Comte Louis de Vaulchier. He held this position for eight years with ample time for travel and literary pursuits.
In 1854 John Henry Newman (qv) invited Renouf to join the staff of the new Catholic University of Ireland at Dublin. Renouf's first appointment was a lectureship in French literature but within a year he became professor of ancient history and later also of oriental languages. His pupil Louis Anne de Vaulchier went with him to Dublin and was one of the first students in the university. In 1856 Newman sent Renouf to Munich to purchase the medical library of Professor Johann Nepomuk von Ringseis, rector of the university there. During this visit he met Ludovica Brentano, daughter of Christian Brentano, niece of the poet Clemens Brentano, and sister of the philosopher Franz Brentano and the political economist Lujo Brentano. He married her on 25 July 1857 in Aschaffenburg. He helped with the editing of the Catholic University's journal The Atlantis and contributed important articles to it. In 1862 Sir John Dalberg Acton (later Lord Acton) asked Renouf to assist him in the editing of the Home and Foreign Review.
During this period in Dublin, Renouf began the intensive study of the ancient Egyptian language and in the space of a few years acquired remarkable competence in reading Egyptian hieroglyphs. The Egyptologist and Assyriologist Edward Hincks (qv) was lavish in praise of Renouf's publications. Like Hincks, Renouf studied the Egyptian texts preserved in the library at TCD. When the Catholic University developed serious financial difficulties and its future looked bleak, Renouf began to look for employment in England and in 1864 became an inspector of schools in London, a post he held until 1886. Most of Renouf's publications were in the field of Egyptology. Two pamphlets, however, brought him into conflict with the catholic hierarchy. The first was on University education for English catholics (1864) in which he argued against the establishment of a catholic university in England but favoured the establishment of catholic halls or colleges at Oxford and Cambridge. The second pamphlet was The condemnation of Pope Honorius (1868), in which he raised the matter of Honorius's monothelite heresy as an argument against papal infallibility. His work was put on the index of forbidden books in Rome and he never wrote on theological matters again. With the abolition of denominational inspection of schools, Renouf no longer had to travel up and down the country and from 1871 was in charge of the London district of Tower Hamlets. In 1875–6 he spent some months travelling through Syria, Palestine and Egypt. From 1879 to 1881 he was based in Cambridge thanks to an exchange with another inspector of schools. His son Louis was a student at Trinity College, Cambridge, and his daughter Edith was preparing to study at Newnham College.
During these years as an inspector of schools he continued his Egyptological studies and his publications were numerous. In 1875 he published An elementary grammar of the Egyptian language, and in 1880 his Hibbert lectures of 1879 appeared as Lectures on the origin and growth of religion, as illustrated by the religion of ancient Egypt. His life changed dramatically in 1886 when he was appointed keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities at the British Museum. He was elected president of the society of biblical archaeology in 1887. In 1891 the retirement age for civil servants was reduced from seventy to sixty-five and the trustees insisted that Renouf should retire. Egyptologists throughout the rest of Europe were outraged and sent a letter of protest to the prime minister but to no avail. Edward Maunde Thompson, the principal librarian, and Ernest Wallis Budge, his assistant, probably helped to engineer his early departure. He was extremely upset when Budge succeeded him as keeper. In retirement Renouf worked on his translation of the Egyptian Book of the dead. The work was completed and published after his death by the Swiss Egyptologist Edouard Naville. Queen Victoria conferred a knighthood on Renouf in 1896 in recognition of his valuable service to the British Museum. He died 14 October 1897 at his home in London. His remains were taken to Guernsey and after a requiem mass they were placed in the crypt of St Joseph's church in St Peter Port.