Rita Freed

Rita Freed received her B.A. from Wellesley College and her M. A. and Ph. D. in Egyptian and Ancient Near Eastern Art and Archaeology from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.  She was Associate Professor of Art at the University of Memphis and founding Director of the Institute of Egyptian Art and Archaeology before coming to the MFA, Boston, to head the Department of Ancient Egyptian, Nubian and Near Eastern Art, a position she now holds as Emerita.  She also teaches Egyptian and Nubian Art at Wellesley College and to underserved at risk high school students through the Seymour Institute.

Freed has excavated in Egypt at numerous sites from the Delta to Karnak as well as in Israel and Cyprus.  The exhibitions she has curated and co-curated include Egypt’s Golden Age, A Divine Tour of Ancient Egypt, Ramesses the Great, Pharaohs of the Sun, The Secrets of Tomb 10A and Ancient Nubia Now. 

Recently she was the Richard D. Cohen Fellow in Art History at the Hutchins Center, Harvard University, where she pursued research in Nubian art and developed methods to make it more widely available.  She is currently working on a book entitled Ancient Nubian Art:  A History.

Iman Nagy

Iman is a seasoned field archaeologist and surveyor that specializes in North African landscape archaeology with a special focus on rock art. She holds a Master's degree in Egyptology and Northeast African archaeology. Her doctoral research at the University of California, Los Angeles examines the relationship of geomorphological influence on ancient religious ideologies. For the past decade, she has worked on projects in Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia and also has extensive experience in Southeast Asia, with projects in the Philippines and Cambodia. Following her passion for the spectacular rock art landscapes across North Africa, she continues to work at sites ranging from the early neolithic to contemporary periods. Public education and demystifying archaeology is another major passion for Iman, who loves to share her unique insights from the field. 

Natasha Ayers

Natasha Ayers received her PhD in Egyptian Archaeology from the University of Chicago. She has almost 20 years of experience working on excavations across Egypt, and she is the ceramicist for Middle Kingdom through New Kingdom pottery at Tell Edfu. Natasha is excited to share her insights during the visit to Edfu on our Ancient Egypt and the Nile journey!

Natasha is currently a senior postdoctoral research fellow at the Austrian Archaeological Institute in Vienna, where she received a research grant from the Austrian Science Fund for her project “Communities Reassembled – Rethinking Identity in Ancient Egypt.” She is a specialist in the material culture of the second millennium BCE, and her research focuses on using artifacts in combination with anthropological theory to better understand the complexities of identity and community in ancient Egypt.

Previously, Natasha designed and taught adult education courses in the archaeology of Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean at Chicago's Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures (formerly the Oriental Institute), as well as undergraduate courses at the University of Chicago. She has collaborated on publication projects with numerous museums, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology in Berkeley, California.

Amy Butner

Amy Butner received a PhD in Ancient Egyptian Art from Emory University and a Masters in Egyptian Hieroglyphs from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. Her dissertation focused on the decoration and design of the non-royal tombs of Amarna. More recently she completed a post doctoral fellowship at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. In addition to traditional academic methodologies, Amy incorporates new technologies such as 3D printing, 3D scanning, and 3D modeling. Amy’s research has taken her all over the world at major academic institutions as well as on-site throughout Egypt. She has working knowledge of Egyptian Arabic and is fluent in German and Dutch. She has twice resided long term in Egypt and will be joining the archaeological team from The Met on their upcoming excavation at Dahshur!

Peter Lacovara

Peter Lacovara (B.A. 1976, Boston University; Ph.D. 1993 The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago) is the Director of The Ancient Egyptian Archaeology and Heritage Fund.  He was Senior Curator of Ancient Egyptian, Nubian, and Near Eastern Art at the Michael C. Carlos Museum from 1998 to 2014.  Previously he served as Assistant Curator in the Department of Ancient Egyptian, Nubian and Near Eastern Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Currently, he is also Consulting Curator for the Egyptian Collection at the Albany Institute of History and Art and Visiting Research Scholar at the American University in Cairo.

Peter Lacovara has consulted and been engaged in museum installations and exhibitions at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Walters Art Museum, the Field Museum of Natural History, the Worcester Art Museum, The Oriental Institute Museum and the at the Carnegie museum.

In addition, he has also taught at Syracuse University, Virginia Commonwealth University, Georgia State University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has been the W. K. Simpson Distinguished Visiting Professor at the American University in Cairo.

His archaeological fieldwork has included excavations at the Valley of the Kings at Thebes, the Palace-City of Amenhotep III at Malqata in Western Thebes, Abydos, Hierakonpolis and at the Giza Plateau, and currently he is directing the survey and restoration of the site of Deir el-Ballas.  His publications include studies on Daily Life and Urbanism in Ancient Egypt, Egyptian Mortuary Traditions, and the Material Culture of Ancient Egypt and Nubia.

Ashley Arico

Ashley Arico is currently the Elizabeth McIlvaine Assistant Curator of Ancient Art at the Art Institute of Chicago. She received her PhD in Near Eastern Studies with a focus in Ancient Egyptian art and archaeology from Johns Hopkins University, where her research examined Egyptian statues as evidence for interactions between Egypt and the Levant in ancient times. For several years, Ashley participated in excavations at the temple of the lioness-headed goddess Mut in Luxor, Egypt. She previously held positions at the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum, the Walters Art Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Her interests include tracing how Egyptian artifacts have moved and been interpreted over time from antiquity to today, and particularly in how tourism to Egypt in the late 19th century influenced the formation of Egyptian museum collections throughout the world, including in Chicago.

Janet Duncan Jones

Janet Duncan Jones, Professor Emerita of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies at Bucknell University, is an archaeologist with over 40 years‘ experience in the field. She has participated in excavation projects in Turkey, Greece, Tunisia, and Jordan. Her experience as a glassblower out of college ignited a career long research interest in preindustrial technologies and the lives of early craft workers. While living in villages in the Middle East she became interested in the impacts of preindustrial technologies on the ancient environment and the evolution of cultural landscapes. Her publications include studies of the ancient glass from sites in Turkey and Jordan, and synthetic considerations of the landscape of ancient ruins and of the messages and impacts of ancient mega-engineering projects. Recently she has focused her work on the impact of the Moors in southern Spain on urbanism, architecture, technology, and intellectual history.

Janet has lived in Turkey and Greece, and has traveled widely with an eye toward the messages that landscapes send us about the values and concerns of past peoples. She holds degrees from the College of William and Mary and from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she also acquired a devotion to ACC basketball. She lives in the mountains of central Pennsylvania with her geographer husband and hounds descended from those she originally imported from the Euphrates Valley in southeastern Turkey. 

Daniel Warne

Daniel Warne is a Ph.D. candidate in Egyptology at the University of Memphis.  The focus of his current research is the ritual function and classification of a largely royal iconographical motif dating to the New Kingdom.  He has studied, worked, and excavated in Egypt for nearly two decades.  He has worked with Egyptian collections at major museums in Egypt, the United States, and the United Kingdom. He is currently an illustrator and digital epigrapher with the Theban Tomb 16 Project at Dra abu al-Naga.  His recent research projects include the scientific analysis of a Ptolemaic mummy, the study of the coffin of Ankhefenmut (an Egyptian priest of the 21st Dynasty, Bab el-Gasus cache), Egyptian Revival sphinxes, and Egyptian collections in the Finger Lakes region of Upstate New York.

Daniel Warne is a distinguished and passionate educator, earning him the State University of New York Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2016.  He has taught numerous courses and seminars in archaeology, Egyptology, and cultural anthropology.  He enjoys travel and has led educational trips, taught overseas, and coordinated several study-abroad programs for university students.  He looks forward to being part of your tour through Egypt.

Rozenn Bailleul-LeSuer

Rozenn Bailleul-LeSuer received her PhD in Egyptology from the University of Chicago. She now divides her time between teaching in the Department of Anthropology at SUNY Brockport and being the curator of the Morgan-Manning House, a Victorian dwelling and museum located in western New York. After studying  chemical engineering in Lille, France, and completing a master’s in Greek and Latin at the University of Vermont, Rozenn centered her research on the ancient Egyptians’ relationship with their environment—most especially with the animals that shared their lives. She is publishing a book on ancient Egyptian aviculture and poultry husbandry. She has worked as a consultant for the Art Institute of Chicago and the Oriental Institute Museum of the University of Chicago, where she curated the exhibit Between Heaven and Earth: Birds in Ancient Egypt.

Rozenn’s move to the Victorian village of Brockport has motivated her to read the many letters and diaries that European and American travelers of the Victorian era wrote during their journeys through Egypt. She is eager to discover how these privileged members of western society described the people they met, as well as the sites, monuments, and landscapes that have since vanished. Rozenn simply loves sharing her passion for Egypt with fellow travelers and cannot wait to do so with you. Be prepared to admire birds along the way—she will have her binoculars and bird books!

Debora Heard

Debora Heard is a Ph.D. Candidate in Anthropology specializing in Nubian Archaeology at the University of Chicago where she has also extensively studied the ancient Egyptian language and history. Her dissertation research analyzes the inscriptions and iconography of Kushite temples dedicated to the gods Amun and Apedemak in Upper Nubia. She situates her research at the intersection of anthropology, archaeology, Egyptology, and Nubian Studies.

Debora has excavated at the 4th Cataract of the Nile River in Sudan as a member of the Oriental Institute Nubian Expedition. For more than 10 years, she has taught courses, given public lectures, and participated in special programming dedicated to ancient Nubia and Egypt at the Oriental Institute, the Kemetic Institute, Chicago State University and, most recently, the University of Nebraska-Omaha. Her audiences have included grade school children, college students, school teachers, museum docents, and general members of the public seeking information about the ancient world. Debora has also served as an intern with the Egyptian and Nubian Collections at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and curatorial assistant in the installation of the Robert F. Picken Family Nubian Gallery of the Oriental Institute Museum of the University of Chicago, as well as conducted research at the British Museum, Ashmolean Museum, and the Griffith Institute at the University of Oxford. She looks forward to sharing her passion for Egypt and Nubia with the Smithsonian Journeys tours.

Annie Shanley

Annie Shanley received her PhD in Egyptian Art from Emory University, where her research focused on the role of the god Seth in New Kingdom royal monuments. For several years she taught art history at Emory University and the University of West Georgia. In 2014, Annie joined the staff of the Michael C. Carlos Museum in Atlanta, Georgia, where she specializes in researching the provenance (ownership history) of objects in the museum’s permanent collection. She lectures on ancient Egypt, as well as provenance and the ethics of collecting antiquities to both university classes and the general public across Atlanta. Annie has participated in archaeological field work at the tomb of Parennefer on the Theban West Bank, the Delta site of Mendes, Malkata (the palace site of Amenhotep III) in Thebes, and Tel Megiddo-East in Israel.

Melinda Hartwig

Melinda Hartwig is the Curator of Ancient Egyptian, Nubian, and Near Eastern art at the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University, where she also teaches.  She is Professor Emerita of Ancient Egyptian Art and Archaeology at Georgia State University. She received her Ph.D. in ancient Near Eastern and Egyptian art and archaeology from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. She is an award-winning author and editor of The Tomb Chapel of Menna (AUC Press) now in its second printing, and A Companion to Ancient Egyptian Art (Wiley-Blackwell), which received a 2016 PROSE Award for Single Volume Reference in the Humanities & Social Sciences. She has also curated a number of exhibitions, installations, and exhibition catalogs.

Melinda has led Theban tomb painting documentation and conservation projects since 1983 as the recipient of NEH and USAID grants. Melinda completed several series for The Great Courses, including The Great Tours: A Guided Tour of Ancient Egypt, a 24-episode course with a guidebook, which builds on her 40+ years as an Egyptologist and tour leader. She has also appeared in ancient Egyptian documentaries for The National Geographic and Smithsonian Channels, among others. Melinda is passionate about ancient Egyptian art, architecture, and history and has dedicated her career to sharing her knowledge and enthusiasm with people around the world.

Huub Pragt

Dutch-born Huub Pragt grew up among ancient Roman ruins and archaeological excavations in the oldest city in Belgium, and decided to be an Egyptologist at age 10, while looking the Pyramids of Giza in an encyclopedia. After receiving his masters in Egyptology from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, he worked as an intern at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. He returned to the Netherlands to work in the education department of the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, where eventually served as head of the department for 10 years.

In 2001, Huub founded his own educational institute, Huub Pragt Egyptologist, to offer lectures and educational programs about Ancient Egypt for a variety of age groups. He has given courses on hieroglyphs and organized short field trips related to Ancient Egypt. He is the author of two novels in Dutch about Ancient Egypt. His enthusiasm and accessible style help bring to life the fascinating stories of the pharaohs, gods, tombs, and treasures of Ancient Egypt.

Clare Fitzgerald

Clare Fitzgerald is a curator, teacher, and researcher whose interest in the intersection of people and material culture drives her professional work. She received her Ph.D. in Egyptian Art from Emory University and held fellowships at the American Research Center in Egypt, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She curated the cross-cultural permanent installation of the ancient Mediterranean collection at the Newark Museum of Art and strives to represent the cultural diversity and interconnected nature of the ancient past in her work.

As the Lisa and Bernard Selz Director of Exhibitions at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, she mounted five international exhibitions on ancient topics ranging from the construction of the Ishtar Gate at Babylon to Pompeiian frescoes to the ancient inspiration of the early 20th-century dance company, Ballets Russes.

Clare teaches not only the art of ancient Egypt and Nubia but also curatorial theory and practice and is currently working as a consultant on developing a curatorial studies program at Hamilton College. Her Egyptological research focuses on representing elite identity in tomb painting and the afterlives of Egyptian art in museum collections.

Denise Doxey

Dr. Denise Doxey is Curator of Ancient Egyptian, Nubian, and Near Eastern Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Previously she was Keeper of Collections for the Egyptian Section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (now the Penn Museum). Denise received her M.Phil. in Classical Archaeology from Oxford University and her Ph.D. in Ancient History from the University of Pennsylvania. Her teaching experience includes Egyptology courses at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University. She has participated in excavations in Egypt at the sites of Abydos and Saqqara. In addition to numerous articles, she is the author or co-author of five books, most recently Arts of Ancient Nubia and Jewels of Ancient Nubia. She has served on the Board of Governors of the American Research Center in Egypt on the Board of the International Council of Museum’s International Committee for Egyptology. In her time at the MFA, Denise has overseen the renovation of galleries for Predynastic and Early Dynastic art, Old Kingdom art, and Middle Kingdom funerary art. She was the co-curator of the exhibition Secrets of Tomb 10A: Egypt 2000 BC and the curator for Ancient Nubia Now.

Betsy Bryan

Betsy Bryan is the professor emerita of Egyptian art and archaeology at Johns Hopkins University, where she continues to teach and work with the Archaeological Museum. Betsy received her doctorate from Yale University’s Near Eastern Languages and Literatures Department and there established her lifelong interest in Egypt’s 18th dynasty and New Kingdom (ca. 1600–1069 B.C.E.) as she wrote her dissertation on Tutankhamun’s great-grandfather Thutmose IV. She was fortunate to join the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Johns Hopkins University in 1986 and at the same time serve as co-curator at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Ancient Arts Department for the exhibition “Egypt’s Dazzling Sun: Amenhotep III and his World,” which traveled to the Louvre in Paris. In 2002 she organized an exhibition with the National Gallery of Art, “The Quest for Immortality,” borrowed entirely from Egypt, and it traveled in North America for seven years. 

In ancient Thebes, Betsy worked on an epigraphic project in the unfinished painted tomb of the royal butler to Amenhotep II and has participated in excavations at the Temple of the Goddess Mut, studying the temple’s architecture and artifacts as well as cult rituals.

Betsy has published and contributed to numerous books in addition to those on Thutmose IV and Amenhotep III, and her familiarity with Thebes is deep and long. She has appeared in a number of documentaries and recently in the subscription series “Real Ancient Egypt” by Wondrium (formerly The Great Courses). Betsy has shared her passion for Egypt with the public throughout her career.