STARS OF EGYPTOLOGY

Author of sixteen books, Dr. Aidan Dodson was the William K. and Marilyn M. Simpson Professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo in the spring of 2013. Elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 2003, he is a senior research fellow in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Bristol.

I first saw Dr. Dodson talking about pyramids in a documentary and was impressed with his knowledge and also plain ”niceness”. Like many of you, I have his books lining the shelves. Sethy I, King of Egypt: His Life and Afterlife is the latest which I highly recommend. For a list, check out the end of an interesting interview where I caught up with Aidan who was in the middle of buying his latest house with wife Dyan Hilton.

INTERVIEW

When did you first develop your interest in ancient Egypt?

It was when I was about 7 or 8, and I joined the local public library. I was immediately drawn to books with skeletons in them, which turned out to be about archaeology. I was soon focussing on books about the archaeology of Egypt, and from then onwards Egyptology was my main hobby. I had soon read everything on it in our local library, and started requesting inter-library loans, and joined the Egypt Exploration Society when I was 15. Of course, I had no idea that I would end up as its Chairman 35 years later! I also wrote my first published article around the same time, which appeared a couple of years later in the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, just after I had started at university.

What education have you had in Egyptology?

I did a year of the BA degree in Egyptology at the University of Durham, before transferring to the University of Liverpool to do their BA in the Archaeology of Eastern Mediterranean, specialising in Egypt – which thus comprised half my classes; as part of the course I also spent a month in Egypt on a study-tour. I graduated with 1^st class honours in 1985. I then went to the University of Cambridge to do an MPhil in Museum Practice & Archaeology, again specialising in Egypt; this included internships in the university’s Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology and Fitzwilliam Museum, in both cases working on their Egyptian collections. I graduated in 1986, and continued working in the museums for a year, before being forced by financial pressures to take a ‘day job’ with the UK Civil Service. However, in parallel I worked on the PhD in my spare time, which I was awarded in 1995.

How important would you say an education was in becoming an Egyptologist? What form should it take?

Although one can self-teach quite a lot, some formal education in at least archaeology/history is vital if one is going to develop an understanding of how to research and critically assess material. Otherwise, there is too much danger of falling into the trap of simply accepting ‘received wisdom’ and not chasing things back to primary sources, which has to underpin any meaningful contribution to the subject. Actually going to Egypt is also an important part of an Egyptological education: without understanding the ‘feel’ of the country, one can never fully get to grips with the place.

What would you say to a student has studied Egyptology for years, but can’t get a job as an Egyptologist? 

That was me: I spent 25 years as a Civil Servant to pay my rent and buy food! But I carried on being an Egyptologist, just doing my research and writing in my spare time, although I was lucky in that my interests are generally museum- and archive-based, as having a ‘day job’ makes it very difficult to work on field-projects. I was also fortunate that for the first 10 years of having to hold down a job in the ‘real world’ I was living in London, with the libraries of the Egypt Exploration Society and University College London on my doorstep, and also regular Egyptological events.

The key thing was to be disciplined about making sure I had ‘space’ in my life of academic work, and as a result I managed to do all the work for my PhD alongside the job, and then continue to produce articles and books. I also started my routine of coming to North America every April to take part in the American Research Center in Egypt Annual Meeting, to maintain my international links, and also do some guest lectures. Back in the UK, I did some evening class teaching, and then when my Civil Service department was due to move from London to Bristol I was recruited (at a party at the British Museum!) to do the same at the University of Bristol once the move had taken place. Soon afterwards, I was asked to do some undergraduate teaching as well, which eventually meant that was working a 4.5-day week for the government and a 0.5-day week for the university, with an hourly-paid teaching post, and an honorary Research Fellowship. Fifteen years further on, I managed to get early retirement from the Civil Service, allowing me to return to full-time academia, part-funded by my new pension! As such, I spent a semester teaching at the American University in Cairo, as well as continuing to work at Bristol, which made me full Professor of Egyptology in 2018.

So, what I would say to a student is to “keep at it”, even when forced to take a day-job, and you never know where things might end up.

What is your favourite Egyptian period? 

I really have two: the late Eighteenth Dynasty and the Third Intermediate Period. Loving the late Eighteenth Dynasty – i.e. the Amarna Period – is such a cliché that, in spite of my first published paper being about it, I did try and fight the temptation for it to be one of my specialities. However, the fascinating issues surrounding it – and also the modern historiography of the period – has kept pulling me back, and my upcoming book on Nefertiti just underlines that the addiction is impossible to kick. Indicative of the ‘fun’ that the period involves is the fact that the book’s key conclusions utterly contradict those of that first published paper, 42 years ago!

Why do you think your academic books are so popular?

I try and write them in such a way that they are not only fully scholarly – with comprehensive referencing, foot/endnotes – but also accessible to the non-specialist, and are attractively and affordably produced, with the maximum number of images I can get my publisher to allow. While some academics seem to think that ‘real’ scholarship involves writing jargon-heavy, ludicrously-expensive, tomes that we only be read by deep-specialists, I think that part of being an academic is to make sure that one’s conclusions are as widely available as possible. This means, in particular, that the amateur enthusiast should be a key target, including many people who have a profound knowledge of many aspects of their chosen field, and deserve the most up-to-date sources. Egyptology moves very rapidly, and things that were ‘facts’ a few years ago may now have been massively altered, or even completely disproved, making many ‘standard’ works obsolescent at best. A good example is the way that when I updated one of my books, written less than a decade before, for a paperback edition, I had to change 75% of the pages in one way or another.

Why do you think you still appear in documentaries about ancient Egypt? 

Partly because I’ve done quite a few in the past, and I’m thus in various production companies’ address books! While always keen to use the medium to get my views ‘out there’, I’m now rather more picky about what offers I accept than I once was, and will only normally say “yes” if they are doing something genuinely new and interesting and/or they are getting access to something that is normally ‘all too difficult’ to get into – even by a professional Egyptologist. For example, last summer I went to Egypt for just a couple of days because they had got permission to get into the two always-closed sections of the Serapeum at Saqqara ….

 What is your latest book? Tour?

Rameses III, King of Egypt: His Life and Afterlife came out last autumn from the American University in Cairo Press, and I’ve given a number of promotional lectures on it – including a ‘launch’ in Cairo in January. I’m one of the editors and contributors of A World History of Egyptology, currently in production by Cambridge University Press. I’m due to be leading an Eighteenth Dynasty-themed tour of Egypt in February 2021. In addition to my Egyptological books, I also research and write on naval history between ~1855 and 1945, and have a book due out this spring entitled Spoils of the War: the fates of enemy fleets after the two world wars (with Serena Cant, Seaforth Publishing).

What is your next project?

Mainly to continue the ‘Life and Afterlife’ series: Nefertiti, Queen and Pharaoh of Egypt: her life and afterlife is currently in production for this autumn. This should be followed by The First Pharaohs (for 2021, inshallah!), Tutankhamun (2022 – blatant cash-in on the centenary), The Nubian Pharaohs (2023) and Thutmose III and Hatshepsut (2024). I’m also planning to continue various Egyptian coffin-related projects, and also finally get going on a long-planned volume on Egyptian historiography. Wearing my hat as a naval historian, a book on German cruisers 1871–1918 in preparation (with Dirk Nottelmann, for 2021).

List of books (shortened)
Click through links to Amazon

Sethy I, King of Egypt: His Life and Afterlife
https://www.amazon.com/Sethy-King-Egypt-Life-Afterlife/dp/9774168860/

Rameses III, King of Egypt: His Life and Afterlife https://www.amazon.com/Rameses-III-King-Egypt-Afterlife/dp/9774169409/

Amarna Sunrise: Egypt from Golden Age to Age of Heresy  https://www.amazon.com/Amarna-Sunrise-Egypt-Golden-Heresy/dp/9774167740/

Amarna Sunset: Nefertiti, Tutankhamun, Ay, Horemheb, and the Egyptian Counter-Reformation https://www.amazon.com/Amarna-Sunset-Nefertiti-Tutankhamun-Counter-Reformation/dp/9774168593/

Afterglow of Empire: Egypt from the Fall of the New Kingdom to the Saite Renaissance https://www.amazon.com/Afterglow-Empire-Egypt-Kingdom-Renaissance/dp/9774169255/

Nefertiti, Queen and Pharaoh of Egypt: Her Life and Afterlife https://www.amazon.com/Nefertiti-Queen-Pharaoh-Egypt-Afterlife/dp/9774169905/

The Royal Tombs of Ancient Egypt https://www.amazon.com/Royal-Tombs-Ancient-Egypt-ebook/dp/B01MA3TJI1/