Oral History of American Egyptology

Dr. Solange Ashby received her Ph.D. in Egyptology with a specialization in ancient Egyptian language and Nubian religion from the University of Chicago. Dr. Ashby’s expertise in sacred ancient languages includes Egyptian hieroglyphs, Demotic, Coptic, Ethiopic, Biblical Greek, and Biblical Hebrew, which underpins her research into the history of religious transformation in Northeast Africa and the Middle East. Her current research describes the roles of women - queens, priestesses, mothers - in traditional Nubian religious practices. She is also a founding member of the William Leo Hansberry Society, which seeks to create pathways for people of African descent - on the continent and in the diaspora - to engage in the study of African antiquity.

Anthony Crosby is a conservation architect specializing in earthen architecture. He has participated in heritage protection in Armenia, the United States, Central and South America, the Middle East, and Egypt. He has also been involved in documentation and preservation design specification for archaeological sites, construction documents for historic structures, development of preservation maintenance programs, project management and field supervision of preservation projects with organizations including the International Center for the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Properties (ICCROM) in Rome and the International Scientific Committee on Earthen Archaeological Heritage (ICOMOS).

Janice Yellin is a graduate of Brandeis University, and has taught at Louisiana State University, the University of Florida, Brandeis University, and Merrimack College. She held the Martha Willcomb Lectureship in Egyptian Civilization at Harvard University and is Professor Emeritus at Babson College. She is currently Director of the Royal Pyramids of Kush Project publishing the pyramids of Kings and queens of ancient Meroë.

Dr. Renée Friedman is a Research Associate of the University of Oxford and a graduate of McGill University and University of California, Berkeley. She has taught at Berkeley and the American University in Cairo, and has worked at many sites throughout Egypt since 1980 including Giza, the Valley of Kings, the Wadi Tumilat, Mandes, and Tell Muqdam. Her special interest is the Predynastic Period and she has had a remarkable career undertaking groundbreaking excavations at the site of Hierakonpolis since 1983.

Dr. Leslie Ann Warden is the Leonhardt Cassullo Associate Professor of Art History in the Department of Fine Arts at Roanoke College. Her research interests focus on the Old through Middle Kingdoms and using archaeological ceramics to investigate aspects of commodity production and distribution. Dr. Warden directs the excavations of the settlement of Kom el-Hisn in the western Nile delta and also participates in archeological fieldwork in the Kharga Oasis and at Elephantine.

Dr. Betsy M. Bryan has served as Vice Dean for Humanities and Social Sciences and the Alexander Badawy Professor of Egyptian Art and Archaeology at Johns Hopkins University, where she has taught since 1986. Dr. Bryan specializes in the history, art, and archaeology of the New Kingdom in Egypt. She has conducted fieldwork in Egypt in the tomb of the royal butler Suemniwet and the temple complex of the goddess Mut at Karnak.

The Elsie B. Smith Professor in the Liberal Arts and Chair of Art History. An expert on the eastern Mediterranean in the late antique and Byzantine periods, Dr. Bolman is best known for her work on the Christian monasteries of Egypt.

Donald Bruce Redford is a Canadian Egyptologist and archaeologist, and is currently Professor of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies at Pennsylvania State University. Professor Redford has directed a number of important excavations in Egypt along with his wife Susan Redford, who is also an Egyptologist and archaeologist, notably at the temple of Akhenaten at East Karnak and at the Delta site of Mendes.

Dr. Christine Lilyquist is a pioneering curator who transformed the way Egyptological collections are exhibited to the public, created the first blockbuster exhibition, the Treasures of Tutankhamun as well as conducted important archeological fieldwork and material culture studies. She is the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s former head of the Department of Egyptian Art and Lila Acheson Wallace Research Curator in Egyptology and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Visiting Scholar at the Hood Museum at Dartmouth.

Jack Josephson an expert on the art history of the Egyptian Late Period and studied at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University (NYU), under the tutelage of Bernard Bothmer. He authored a catalog of the Late Period Sculpture In the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and was appointed Chairman of the Cultural Property Advisory Committee of the United States by President George H. W. Bush. He also became chairman of the International Foundation for Art Research. He also excavated at the site of Mendes in the Delta and has been working on the recent discoveries of the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo at Abydos and the art of Egypt’s earliest dynasties.

Dr. Kent R. Weeks is most well known for The American University in Cairo’s Theban Mapping Project–an ambitious plan to systematically record, photograph and map every temple and tomb in the Theban Necropolis. A major discovery made during the project 1995 was in identifying the tomb of the sons of Ramesses II (KV 5) in the Valley of the Kings. He also undertook important fieldwork elsewhere in Egypt, working on the Nubian Salvage Project, and at the sites of Hierakonpolis, Sakkara, Giza, and Mendes.

David O’Connor is one of the world’s foremost American Egyptologists. Until his recent retirement, he was the Lila Acheson Wallace Professor of Ancient Egyptian Art in the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University. Prior to that, he was Professor of Egyptology at the University of Pennsylvania and Curator of the Egyptian Collection at the University Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He received his Ph.D. in 1969 from the University of Cambridge and B.A. in 1958 from the University of Sydney. He had a long and important career as a scholar, professor, and field archaeologist working in both Nubia and Egypt.