Dows Dunham studied art History at Harvard University from 1909 to 1919 under George Andrew Reisner, who offered him a job and made him one of his main assistants beginning in 1914. He worked mainly on Reisner’s team, excavating at numerous expeditions in Egypt and Sudan, including, most importantly, the tomb of Queen Hetepheres at Giza and the royal pyramids of the Kingdom of Kush in Sudan. He was a curator at the Egyptian Department of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and published a large part of the excavations of George Andrew Reisner.