Dr Tony Leahy MA. PhD (Cantab)

MA (Cantab) in Egyptology; PhD (Cantab) on ‘Abydos in the Late Period’.

I began my university career studying ancient and medieval history before switching to Egyptology, and many of the interests developed during research for my PhD have remained central to my research. Much of my work on the history of Egypt in the first millennium BC has been done in museum basements, but I have also worked in the field as an archaeologist at Malqata on the west bank at Luxor, at Amarna, at Balamun in the Delta and at Saqqara.

Topics of particular interest include: epigraphy and palaeography; chronological and political structure; elite presentation and the institution of kingship; the religious site of Abydos; personal names as a source for religious and political developments; foreign immigration and social change; cultural interrelationships with the Mediterranean and the Near East.

Most of my recent and current research comes under one or more of three headings.

The first is the Saite Period (664-525 BC): projects nearing completion include a comprehensive analysis of the erasure of the names of the pharaoh Amasis and a study of Papyrus Rylands IX, while a history of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty will follow. 

The second is the extent and nature of the relations between Abydos and Thebes in the Twenty-fifth to Twenty-sixth Dynasties, as seen through the prosopographic evidence from the two sites.

The third is elite presentation: I am particularly interested in exploring the value of private monuments, especially statues and stelae, for our understanding of the history of Egypt and am preparing a publication of the monuments of a neglected high priest of Heliopolis of the seventh century BC.