Acclaimed Egyptologist Donald Redford retires after six-decade career

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — In 1998, Canadian retirement requirements forced Donald Redford to leave the University of Toronto after 36 highly distinguished years. But the world-renowned Egyptologist’s career was far from over.

Eventually, some colleagues convinced him to move to the United States and take a new faculty position in Penn State’s Department of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies (CAMS).

“They were looking for a roster of experts from all over the world to put it on the map, as it were,” Redford said.

Twenty-six years later, the department is among the world’s leaders in the study of ancient Egypt largely thanks to the efforts of Redford, who recently retired from his position as professor of CAMS and history.

Redford’s absence will be deeply felt, said Tawny Holm, CAMS head and associate professor of CAMS and Jewish studies.

“Don's arrival made Penn State a reference for ancient Egypt across the world,” Holm said. “We will greatly miss Don — a kind friend, a generous colleague and a beloved teacher, who for decades engaged thousands of undergraduate and graduate students with the fascinating world of ancient Egypt, its language, and its history and culture.”

A historian and philologist of northeast Africa and the Near East, Redford received his doctoral degree from the University of Toronto. Fluent in ancient Egyptian, Semitics and Akkadian, he served under Dame Kathleen Kenyon in the excavations of the old city of Jerusalem from 1964 to 1967.

Among Redford’s major accomplishments was his 1976 discovery of the oldest temple of the heretic monotheistic Pharaoh Akhenaten. A few years later, he and his team revealed a major domestic area of the capital city of Thebes.

For decades, Redford supervised annual excavations in Egypt, including those to Mendes and Thebes as part of the University of Pennsylvania-based Akhenaten Temple Project, which he co-directed with his wife and former CAMS faculty member Susan Redford. That work in the Nile Delta has contributed much to the current knowledge of complex society and state formation in Egypt circa 3100 BCE and has refined and added to the knowledge of the civilization during its Late and Hellenistic Periods (circa 700-200 BCE).

“The discoveries don’t seem to stop — Egyptology is an ongoing field that never seems to let up,” Redford said. “I’m a little nostalgic looking back at all the work we’ve done and all that remains to be done. I’ve made a lot of friends and a lot of memories along the way.”

A prolific and accomplished author, Redford’s books, many of which remain in print, include “Akhenaten the Heretic King” (Princeton University Press, 1984); “Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times” (Princeton University Press, 1992); “The Wars in Syria and Palestine of Thutmosis III” (Brill, 2003); “From Slave to Pharaoh: The Black Experience of Ancient Egypt” (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006); “City of the Ram-man: The Story of Ancient Mendes” (Princeton University Press, 2010); and “The Medinet Habu Records of the Foreign Wars of Ramses III” (Brill, 2018).

In addition, Redford has edited several notable projects, among them the “Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt” (Oxford University Press, 2001).

“Don has published dozens of groundbreaking books and hundreds of research articles,” Holm said. “His contributions shine not only because of their stunning erudition, but also for an engaging and energic prose.”

Redford’s talents also extended to the classroom, said Holm, noting his Egyptian Civilization course often drew enrollment in the hundreds. Many students already knew who he was, she said, thanks to his appearances on TV programs like ABC’s “Nightline” and documentaries on the Discovery, National Geographic and History channels.

Through the years, Redford advised more than 30 successful doctoral candidates who have gone on to their own high-profile careers in Egyptology.

“Students who became fascinated with Egyptian civilization often went on to study the Egyptian language with Don,” Holm said. “Especially memorable to many students will always be the excavations and study tours in Egypt with Don and Sue.”

First enchanted by the ancient world thanks to a series of National Geographic articles he read at age 7, Redford said it was always his goal to instill that same passion in students.

“I’ve ignited I hope a certain fire in the bosoms of some young students,” he said. “Frequently over the last 10 years, I’ve found myself working with the students of my earlier career. And that’s rather intriguing. We’ve had trainees in a variety of parts of the world, including Egypt and all over the Middle East. I could go on and on about some of these people and what they’ve accomplished.”

Given the subject matter, what’s not to be fascinated by, said Redford, noting the many ways ancient Egyptian society applies to our own modern world.

“Egypt invented a number of concepts that exist now, from income taxes to border controls,” he said. “The needs of harnessing a mighty river such as the Nile would be the same today as it was 5,000 years ago. Ancient Egypt was a priceless example of an ancient corporation in which the pharaoh was the great CEO of the whole outfit. If you follow that line of reasoning, he’s not so much a dictator as he is a leader and bound into a tradition of statehood that’s the same today as it would have been in ancient times.”

Now that he’s retired, Redford said he expects to devote the bulk of his energies to finishing his long-in-the-making history of Egypt. There’s probably enough material to fill five book volumes, he said.

Beyond that, he’ll continue his research, and take pride in a career that made a real mark.

“It was good to bring some excitement to a discipline that wasn’t well represented here,” Redford said. “I just hope that moving forward we can maintain an awareness of the relevance of our disciplines and their great importance to a well-rounded life.”