John Lewis Romer (born 30 September 1941, in Surrey, England) is a British Egyptologist, historian and archaeologist. He has created and appeared in many TV archaeology series, including Romer's Egypt, Ancient Lives, Testament, The Seven Wonders of the World, Byzantium: The Lost Empire and Great Excavations: The Story of Archaeology.
Romer was educated at Ottershaw School, a state boarding school near Woking, Surrey, and the Royal College of Art in London, coming to archaeology through his epigraphic studies of painting and drawing. He went on to work as an artist in Persepolis and Cairo, drawing and studying ancient inscriptions.
Romer began his archaeological work in 1966, when he participated in the University of Chicago's Epigraphic Survey at the temples and tombs of the ancient Egyptian site of Thebes (modern-day Luxor). From 1977 to 1979 he originated and organised a major expedition to the Valley of the Kings which carried out the first excavation there since the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb in 1922. In 1979 he headed the Brooklyn Museum's expedition to excavate the tomb of Ramesses XI.
In 1979 Romer and his wife (Elizabeth Romer, also an archaeologist and designer) founded The Theban Foundation, in Berkeley, California, a body dedicated to the conservation and documentation of the Royal Tombs of Thebes. One result of this was the creation of the Theban Mapping Project.
Romer's books (some co-written with his wife) include Valley of the Kings, Ancient Lives, Testament and The Seven Wonders of the World, many of which were televised. His most recent works, A History of Ancient Egypt: From the First Farmers to the Great Pyramid, and A History of Ancient Egypt Volume 2: From the Great Pyramid to the Fall of the Middle Kingdom were published in 2012 and 2017. [1]
Tutankhamun was the antepenultimate pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of ancient Egypt. He ascended to the throne around the age of nine and reigned until his death around the age of nineteen. The most significant actions of his reign were reversing the societal changes enacted by his predecessor, Akhenaten, during the Amarna Period: Tutankhamun restored the traditional polytheistic form of ancient Egyptian religion, undoing the religious shift known as Atenism, and moved the royal court away from Akhenaten's capital, Amarna. Tutankhamun was one of few kings worshipped as a deity during his lifetime; this was usually done posthumously for most pharaohs. In popular culture, he is known for his vastly opulent wealth found during the 1922 discovery of his tomb, KV62, the only such tomb to date to have been found in near-intact condition. The discovery of his tomb is widely considered one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of all time.
Tanis or San al-Hagar is the Greek name for ancient Egyptian ḏꜥn.t, an important archaeological site in the north-eastern Nile Delta of Egypt, and the location of a city of the same name. It is located on the Tanitic branch of the Nile, which has long since silted up. The first study of Tanis dates to 1798 during Napoléon Bonaparte's expedition to Egypt. Engineer Pierre Jacotin drew up a map of the site in the Description de l'Égypte. It was first excavated in 1825 by Jean-Jacques Rifaud, who discovered the two pink granite sphinxes now in the Musée du Louvre, and then by François Auguste Ferdinand Mariette between 1860 and 1864, and subsequently by William Matthew Flinders Petrie from 1883 to 1886. The work was taken over by Pierre Montet from 1929 to 1956, who discovered the royal necropolis dating to the Third Intermediate Period in 1939. The Mission française des fouilles de Tanis (MFFT) has been studying the site since 1965 under the direction of Jean Yoyotte and Philippe Brissaud, and François Leclère since 2013.
Zahi Abass Hawass is an Egyptian archaeologist, Egyptologist, and former Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs, serving twice. He has also worked at archaeological sites in the Nile Delta, the Western Desert, and the Upper Nile Valley.
The tomb of Tutankhamun, also known by its tomb number, KV62, is the burial place of Tutankhamun, a pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of ancient Egypt, in the Valley of the Kings. The tomb consists of four chambers and an entrance staircase and corridor. It is smaller and less extensively decorated than other Egyptian royal tombs of its time, and it probably originated as a tomb for a non-royal individual that was adapted for Tutankhamun's use after his premature death. Like other pharaohs, Tutankhamun was buried with a wide variety of funerary objects and personal possessions, such as coffins, furniture, clothing and jewelry, though in the unusually limited space these goods had to be densely packed. Robbers entered the tomb twice in the years immediately following the burial, but Tutankhamun's mummy and most of the burial goods remained intact. The tomb's low position, dug into the floor of the valley, allowed its entrance to be hidden by debris deposited by flooding and tomb construction. Thus, unlike other tombs in the valley, it was not stripped of its valuables during the Third Intermediate Period.
Tomb KV5 is a subterranean, rock-cut tomb in the Valley of the Kings. It belonged to the sons of Ramesses II. Though KV5 was partially excavated as early as 1825, its true extent was discovered in 1995 by Kent R. Weeks and his exploration team. The tomb is now known to be the largest in the Valley of the Kings. Weeks' discovery is widely considered the most dramatic in the valley since the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922.
Tomb KV17, located in Egypt's Valley of the Kings and also known by the names "Belzoni's tomb", "the Tomb of Apis", and "the Tomb of Psammis, son of Nechois", is the tomb of Pharaoh Seti I of the Nineteenth Dynasty. It is one of the most decorated tombs in the valley, and is one of the largest and deepest tombs in the Valley of the Kings. It was uncovered by Italian archaeologist and explorer Giovanni Battista Belzoni on 16 October, 1817.
Tomb WV25 is an unfinished and undecorated tomb in the West Valley of the Valley of the Kings, Egypt. It is clearly the beginning of a royal tomb, and is thought to be the start of Akhenaten's Theban tomb. It was discovered by Giovanni Battista Belzoni in 1817; he found eight Third Intermediate Period mummies inside. The tomb was excavated in 1972 by the University of Minnesota's Egyptian Expedition (UMEE) led by Otto Schaden. The project uncovered pieces of the eight mummies, along with artefacts from a late Eighteenth Dynasty royal burial.
The area of the Valley of the Kings, in Luxor, Egypt, has been a major area of modern Egyptological exploration for the last two centuries. Before this, the area was a site for tourism in antiquity. This area illustrates the changes in the study of ancient Egypt. Starting as antiquity hunting, and ending as scientific excavation of the whole Theban Necropolis. Despite the exploration and investigation noted below, only eleven of the tombs have actually been completely recorded.
Tomb KV54 is located in the Valley of the Kings, in Egypt. It was originally excavated by Edward R. Ayrton on behalf of the American lawyer Theodore M. Davis, who funded the work.
The Valley of the Kings, also known as the Valley of the Gates of the Kings, is a valley in Egypt where, for a period of nearly 500 years from the 16th to 11th century BC, rock-cut tombs were excavated for the pharaohs and powerful nobles of the New Kingdom.
Egypt is a BBC television docudrama serial portraying events in the history of Egyptology from the 18th through early 20th centuries. It originally aired on Sunday nights at 9 pm on BBC1 in 2005. The first two episodes explored the work of Howard Carter and his archaeological quest in Egypt in the early part of the twentieth century. The next two episodes focused on the eccentric explorer "The Great Belzoni" played here by Matthew Kelly. The final two episodes dramatise the discovery and deciphering of the Rosetta Stone by Jean-François Champollion.
Herbert Eustis Winlock was an American Egyptologist and archaeologist, employed by the Metropolitan Museum of Art for his entire career. Between 1906 and 1931 he took part in excavations at El-Lisht, Kharga Oasis and around Luxor, before serving as director of the Metropolitan Museum from 1932 to 1939.
Harry Burton was an English archaeological photographer, best known for his photographs of excavations in Egypt's Valley of the Kings. Today, he is sometimes referred to as an Egyptologist, since he worked for the Egyptian Expedition of the Metropolitan Museum of Art for around 25 years, from 1915 until his death. His most famous photographs are the estimated 3,400 or more images that he took documenting Howard Carter's excavation of Tutankhamun's tomb from 1922 to 1932.
Salima Ikram is a Pakistani professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo, a participant in many Egyptian archaeological projects, the author of several books on Egyptian archaeology, a contributor to various magazines and a guest on pertinent television programs.
Donald P. Ryan is an American archaeologist, Egyptologist, writer and a member of the Division of Humanities at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington. His areas of research interest include Egyptian archaeology, Polynesian archaeology, the history of archaeology, the history of exploration, ancient languages and scripts and experimental archaeology. He is best known for his research in Egypt including excavations in the Valley of the Kings where he investigated the long-neglected undecorated tombs in the royal cemetery. His work there resulted in the rediscovery of the lost and controversial tomb KV60, the re-opening of the long-buried KV21 with its two female and likely royal occupants, and tombs KV27, KV28, KV44, KV45 and KV48. In 2017, he rediscovered three small tombs in the Valley of the Kings which when first encountered in 1906 contained the mummies of animals including a dog and monkeys.
Carl Nicholas Reeves, FSA, is a British Egyptologist, archaeologist and museum curator.
Lyla Pinch Brock is a Canadian Egyptologist, specializing in epigraphy. She lives in Saissac, France.
A necropolis is a large, designed cemetery with elaborate tomb monuments. The name stems from the Ancient Greek νεκρόπολις nekropolis, literally meaning "city of the dead".
Pierre Lacau was a French Egyptologist and philologist. He served as Egypt's director of antiquities from 1914 until 1936, and oversaw the 1922 discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings by Howard Carter.
Aidan Mark Dodson is an English Egyptologist and historian. He has been honorary professor of Egyptology at the University of Bristol since 1 August 2018.