Open Graduate Education Scholars push academic boundaries through their scholarship. The 10 newest members of the Brown University Graduate School’s open education program will customize their Ph.D. studies by seeking a master’s degree in a secondary field.

Despite the COVID-19 disruptions our wonderful students continue to achieve impressive goals. Congratulations to Margaret Geoga and Federico Zangani, who successfully defended their dissertations in the past month. Very well done, especially given the extraordinary pressures of this unique and challenging period.

Long before the spring semester transitioned to remote learning, doctoral student Victoria Almansa-Villatoro had developed and implemented Brown’s first online Egyptology course for undergraduates.

Silvia Štubňová was one of six PhD recipients across the disciplines to receive the honor of a Visiting Assistant Professorship for the Spring 2020 semester. Through this award Silvia was supported to design and teach her own class. Titled “Life on the Nile: Ancient Egypt beyond the Pharaohs", it has been well-received by her students and will be a strong addition to her curriculum vitae. You continue to develop your talents, Silvia, congratulations!

Congratulations to Silvia, who successfully defended her dissertation today! With her are her committee members, Professors James Allen, Leo Depuydt, Matthew Rutz and, using the Zoom application to connect from EPHE (Paris), Andreas Stauder. Excellent work, Silvia!

The department of Egyptology and Assyriology and the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World celebrated Professor Shiyanthi Thavapalan's first book "The Meaning of Color in Ancient Mesopotamia" (actually her second publication, as she co-edited "The Value of Colour. Material and Economic Aspects of the Ancient World" with David Warburton). Well done, Shiyanthi!

It is with sadness the the Department of Egyptology and Assyriology shares the news of the passing of Professor Lanny D. Bell on August 26, 2019. Lanny was a kind and gifted teacher, researcher and friend to many and will be remembered long beyond that date.

The Department is very pleased to relay the news that Professor Shiyanthi Thavapalan received the International Association of Assyriologists (IAA) Dissertation award at this year's Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale (RAI) meeting in Paris July 8-12, 2019.

The Department of Egyptology and Assyriology is very pleased to announce that Margaret (Maggie) Geoga has been awarded the Best Student Paper at the 2019 Annual American Research Center in Egypt conference. We are not surprised, but definitely proud of you, Maggie! Congratulations.

The following report from Vicky Almansa was submitted upon her return from working at an excavation site in Giza, with funding from the Brown University Middle East Studies:

We are delighted to share the news that second year graduate student Sara Mohr has been awarded funding for her work on 3D modeling of cuneiform tablets. The competition was organized by Digital Hammurabi, which was created to provide funding for current PhD students working on Ancient Near East-related topics.

We invite you to join a diverse range of scholars reviewing the reception, use, and misuse of the Ancient Near East in early modern art, literature, scholarship, and politics.

Jessica Tomkins '18 Ph.D. has been selected to be Cal State San Bernardino’s inaugural W. Benson Harer Egyptology Scholar in Residence for winter quarter.

With sincere gratitude to Beatrice Parker, daughter of former Professor and Chair of Egyptology Richard Parker, we are pleased to share with you the lovely new wall hanging - a print of King Tut's funeral mask.

NEH grant will enable Brown researcher to digitally preserve Syrian tablets. With ancient documents threatened by modern-day conflict in Syria, Matthew Rutz’s project will make the text of more than 1,800 cuneiform tablets available digitally.

We are pleased to announce that Professor Mathieu Ossendrijver (Humboldt University, Berlin) will present the second Annual Otto Neugebauer Lecture in the Exact Sciences in Antiquity, titled "Chaldeans on the Nile.

Please join us in congratulating Professor Laurel Bestock, recipient of the John Rowe Workman Award in Excellence in Teaching in the Humanities, 2018.

We are pleased to share the news that Kathryn Howley, PhD'15, has accepted a tenure-track position as Assistant Professor in Art and Architecture in Ancient Egypt at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Congratulations, Kathryn, we look forward to seeing you either in NY or back for a visit at Brown!

The Department of Egyptology and Assyriology at Brown University invites you to the interdisciplinary workshop Rethinking the Origins which will take place on April 13-15, 2018 at RI Hall 108, 60 George Street, Providence, RI 02912 (the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World).

We are very pleased to announce the first annual Parker Lecture in Egyptology, Tuesday, September 26 at 5 PM in Petteruti Lounge of Faunce House. Brown PhD ['09] Ramadan Hussein, currently at the University of Tubingen, will present "Tending to the Dead: Rites, Texts and Embalming Workshop at Saqqara".

A pleasant reunion at the International Congress of History of Science and Technology in Rio de Janeiro.

Three Brown Students got Best Poster recognition at the Annual ARCE conference in Kansas City, MO: Christian Casey, Darcy Hackley and Martin Uildriks; meanwhile, two of three Best Papers went to Jen Thum and to Brendan Hainline (Brown BA, now working on PhD at Chicago). Well Done, Team!

Not surprisingly, Jen's talk, "Adventures in Living Rock Stelae" was extremely well attended, presented and received. Thank you, Jen.

Congratulations are due to Jessica Tomkins for having received an Interdisciplinary Opportunities Program award!

Professor Matthew Rutz has been promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure, effective July 1, a well-deserved accomplishment which the department celebrated together with colleagues, friends and family on March 16.

Julia Troche, PhD '15 has been awarded a tenure-track Assistant Professorship in the History Department at Missouri State University. Well done, Julia, we knew you would do it. Looking forward to a visit sometime!

We are pleased to report that the Assyriology conference planned for February 27 is coming together nicely. The title and topic is "Ancient History: Assyriological Perspectives" and the field of participants is impressive.

We are pleased to share with you information about a just-published book edited by John Steele, with contributions by many of our department members: Yuzhen Guan, M. Willis Monroe, Matthew Rutz, Zackary Wainer and our former Post-Doc Andreas Winkler.

Zackary Wainer successfully defended his dissertation Monday, April 4, and the Egyptology and Assyriology Department happily gathered to congratulate him. We join his family in celebrating his achievements and in wishing him the very best going forward. Well Done, Zack!

The gathering of several preeminent Assyriologists at Brown on Saturday, February 27 resulted in a wonderful exchange of knowledge and ideas.

We are delighted to share with you that Laurel Bestock has been promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure, effective July 1, 2016.

Congratulations to Yuzhen Guan, PhD ’15, for his position as a ResearchProfessor (tenure Track) at the University of Science and Technology of China, in the Department of History of Science and Scientific Archaeology.

The life and work of Otto Neugebauer (1899-1990), founder of Brown's Department of History of Mathematics and recipient of Brown's most prestigious honor, the Rosenberger medal, in 1987, is examined in a newly published book, A Mathematicians Journey's: Otto Neugebauer and Modern Transformations of Ancient Science, co-edited by the department's John Steele.

On Thursday, December 10, Willis Monroe successfully defended his dissertation and department members were very pleased to gather to congratulate him. Willis is one of the first Dean of Faculty Fellowship recipients and will teach a class in our department next semester. Congratulations on both achievements, Willis!

Ramadan Hussein, PhD '09, has been awarded a prestigious grant by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) for the conservation, documentation and publication of the Saite-Persian tombs in Saqqara.

Andreas is now at the University of Oxford, Faculty of Oriental Scientists, as Departmental Lecturer in Egyptology and Coptic. Nice for him that he is closer to ‘home’ in Sweden, yet enjoying milder weather! We are pleased to share the news that TWO of his recent proposals have been granted.

We are very pleased to add Amanda Davis to our proud list of PhD recipients.

The Department of Egyptology and Assyriology is very pleased to congratulate our three newest colleagues on their successful completion to candidacy and defense of their dissertations:

The department is very pleased to announce that PhD candidate Julia Troche for her outstanding presentation at ARCE last week, where she received Third Place of all the papers presented for her work, "On the Origins of Apotheosis in Ancient Egypt."

March 23-24, 2015, University Paris Diderot, Paris
Building Condorcet, Room 646A Mondrian.

This international conference is co-organized by Christine Proust and John Steele and supported by the European project SAW (CNRS & University Paris Diderot) and the Department of Egyptology and Assyriology at Brown University.

The city of Uruk was a major centre of scholarship in Late Babylonian Mesopotamia (second half of the first millennium BCE). Excavations in Uruk have provided a rich variety of documents, often available with some archaeological information, on the individuals and groups who practiced a range of scholarly activities such as mathematics, the astral sciences, medicine and rituals. Most of these documents were part of scholarly libraries. The goal of this conference is to understand mathematical practices in the broad context of scholarship in Uruk. To that end we encourage speakers to examine the interrelation of different genres of scholarship and the circulation of knowledge between individuals or communities of scholars (professions, families, clans, generations, etc) inside Uruk, and from Uruk to other scholarly centres. We expect cases studies grounded on well-delimited collections of tablets which also address broader questions which might include: Who were the scholars who wrote mathematical and other scholarly texts in Uruk? How do we identify and characterize mathematical practices in astral sciences, medicine, and rituals? Which relations can be established between these practices and those documented by mathematical texts? What are the specificities of erudition in Uruk? How did scientific texts fit into the organization of scholarly libraries and of professions? What was the influence of Urukian science in the Hellenistic world and vice versa?

Graduate student Kathryn Howley will be featured in the National Geographic documentary 'Rise of the Black Pharoahs' airing October 1, 2014 at 10:00PM on PBS.

An ancient token-based recording system from before the dawn of history was rendered obsolete by the birth of writing, according to popular wisdom. But now, latest excavations show that, in fact, these clay tokens were integral to administrative functions right across the Assyrian empire – millennia after this system was believed to have vanished.

During a recent visit to China to give a series of lectures Professor John Steele was awarded the honorary title of Guest Professor in the School of History and Culture of Science at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

M. Willis Monroe, a 4th year PhD student in Ancient Western Asian Studies, has been awarded a fellowship from The American Academic Research Institute in Iraq (TAARII) for his research project "Innovation in Seleucid Astrology: Re-investigating the Micro-Zodiac".

New book by James P. Allen
This book, the first of its kind, examines how the phonology and gram-mar of the ancient Egyptian language changed over more than three thousand years of its history, from the first appearance of written documents, ca. 3250 BC, to the Coptic dialects of the second century AD and later.