Featured Expeditions & AEF Projects
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Over the course of more than a century, American institutions and scholars have played an important role in the exploration of ancient Egypt. Outstanding early pioneers included Egyptologists such as Charles E. Wilbour, James H. Breasted, George A. Reisner, Harold H. Nelson, and Herbert E. Winlock.
Today, ARCE's member institutions and affiliated scholars, working closely with Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, conduct research and expeditions throughout the country: in the Delta, along the Mediterranean Coast, in the Nile Valley, among the Egyptian deserts and oases. These expeditions engage all periods of Egyptian history, from prehistoric through Islamic times.
ARCE's Cairo Center provides administrative and technical assistance to ARCE-affiliated expeditions, whose activities include archaeology, epigraphic work, documentation, mapping, scientific research, and conservation.
Director: Roger Bagnall
Amheida, in the Dakhla Oasis in Egypt's Western Desert, has been settled since the Old Kingdom and perhaps much earlier--finds around the site suggest that people were in the area already in the Palaeolithic period. But most of what's visible on the surface is of the Roman period, before the abandonment of the ancient city of Trimithis, probably at the end of the fourth century A.D.
Director: Betsy Bryan
The Johns Hopkins University mission in Egypt, led by Dr. Betsy Bryan, has conducted excavation and conservation work in the Mut Temple precinct of Karnak since 2001. Excavation work has taken place behind the Sacred Lake of the complex as well as within the Temple itself, uncovering industrial and food-processing areas of the Eighteenth Dynasty, New Kingdom enclosure walls and adjacent workshop areas, and remnants of a porch of Hatshepsut found buried beside the Mut Temple. Conservation work has included the rebuilding of interior walls, the cleaning and conservation of decorated and inscribed New Kingdom sandstone and limestone blocks, and the creation of an open-air museum, among other accomplishments.
Director: Richard Wilkinson
The Memorial Temple of Tausert lies between the Ramesseum and the Temple of Merenptah on Luxor's west bank. Tausert, a woman, was the last ruler of the 19th dynasty and a figure of particular historical interest. The site was briefly examined by William Flinders Petrie in 1896, but after preliminary study, the University of Arizona Egyptian Expedition decided that it would be worthwhile to fully clear, record, plan, conserve and publish the remains of this temple. The expedition began in 2004, and five subsequent field session have been completed, producing important results.
