John Darnell
John Coleman Darnell (B.A. 1984, M.A. 1985, The Johns Hopkins University; Ph.D. 1995, The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago) joined the faculty of the Department of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations as Assistant Professor in 1998. His interests include Egyptian religion, cryptography (see his recent The Enigmatic Netherworld Books of the Solar-Osirian Unity), the scripts and texts of Graeco-Roman Egypt (the study of which he pursued as a DAAD Stipendiat at the University of Cologne in 1985 and 1986), and the archaeological and epigraphic remains of ancient activity in the Egyptian Western Desert.

Darnell is director of the Theban Desert Road Survey, an expedition continuing to grow and expand in the Western Desert of Egypt, now in its thirteenth field season (2004-2005). He is also director of the Yale Toshka Desert Survey, a complementary expedition to the Theban Desert Road Survey farther south, now in its sixth field season. His wife Deborah Darnell is the co-director of both expeditions. The twin expeditions have discovered a wealth of material of considerable importance ranging in date from the earliest Predynastic cultures through the early Islamic period. Several publications of the work have already appeared, including J.C. Darnell, Theban Desert Road Survey in the Egyptian Western Desert 1, Gebel Tjauti Rock-Inscriptions 1-45 and Wadi el-Hol Rock Inscriptions 1-45, OIP 119 (Chicago: Oriental Institute Press, 2002). Discoveries have included the Scorpion tableau, perhaps the earliest historical record of ancient Egypt, recording the Abydene subjugation of Naqada and the foundation of a unified Upper Egyptian state at the dawn of Dynasty 0; the earliest alphabetic inscriptions in the Wadi el-Hol; a new Middle Egyptian literary text from the same site; important archaeological remains of the Tasian culture; and many more things too numerous to detail here.


Email: john.darnell@yale.edu