Antonio J. MoralesHeadUniversity of Alcalá (Spain)
Antonio J. Morales Rondán is Associate Professor of Egyptology at the Seminar of Ancient History in the University of Alcalá (UAH, Alcalá de Henares, Madrid) and the Director of the Middle Kingdom Theban Project. Previously, he lectured at Freie Universität Berlin. He is currently organizing an Egyptological program at the University of Alcalá, mainly focused on pharaonic history, religion, language, and culture. The new program already includes courses on Egyptian language (Old and Middle Egyptian, hieratic, Late Egyptian), Egyptian literature, and ancient Egyptian magic and religion. He received his B.A. in Archaeology from the University of Seville in 1997. Later he studied Egyptology in England at the universities of London (UCL), Oxford and Birmingham, as well as in Germany at Heidelberg and Freie Universität Berlin. He obtained his PhD in Egyptology at the University of Pennsylvania in 2013. Antonio’s dissertation deals with the philological and cultural aspects of the transmission of the Pyramid Texts into the Middle Kingdom. His main areas of interest include Egyptian religion, ritual, particularly mortuary corpora, beliefs, and practices, as well as history and culture of the Middle Kingdom.
He has participated as archaeologist and epigrapher in several excavations in Egypt (Abydos, Aswan, Dra Abu el-Naga, El-Amra, Saqqara), and has worked as research assistant at the Department of Egyptian Antiquities in the British Museum, London.
He received his B.A. in Archaeology from the University of Seville in 1997. Later he studied Egyptology in England at the universities of London (UCL), Oxford and Birmingham, as well as in Germany at Heidelberg and Freie Universität Berlin. He obtained his PhD in Egyptology at the University of Pennsylvania in 2013. Antonio’s dissertation deals with the philological and cultural aspects of the transmission of the Pyramid Texts into the Middle Kingdom. His main areas of interest include Egyptian religion, ritual, particularly mortuary corpora, beliefs, and practices, as well as history and culture of the Middle Kingdom.
He has participated as archaeologist and epigrapher in several excavations in Egypt (Abydos, Aswan, Dra Abu el-Naga, El-Amra, Saqqara), and has worked as research assistant at the Department of Egyptian Antiquities in the British Museum, London.
As the head of the Middle Kingdom Theban Project, he aims at the study and publication of several tombs of the late Eleventh and early Twelfth Dynasties that deserve more attention. He coordinates the archaeological mission and focuses on the epigraphic materials resulting from the archaeological activities in the area.
He has published many articles in peer-review journals and chapters to books. In 2001 he edited a book on the production and use of beer in ancient cultures, and has co-edited with Kolb Fellow Jane Hill and Philip Jones a multicultural and interdisciplinary conference volume on Kingship, Politics, and Landscape in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). In 2017 he published a monograph on the transmission of the Pyramid Texts of Nut in the Old and Middle Kingdoms (BSAK 19, Buske, 2017) and last year he co-edited (together with Raúl Sánchez Casado) the volume Priestly officiants in the Old Kingdom mortuary cult (MOA 3, UAH Press, 2022). In addition, he has edited a collective volume in Spanish on the main genres of religious literature in Pharaonic, Greco-Roman and Coptic Egypt, entitled “Religious Literature of Ancient Egypt (2800 BCE – 1000 CE)”, which was published in the summer of 2026. He has delivered lectures and seminars in Egypt, the United States, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Great Britain, the Czech Republic, Brazil, Portugal and Spain.
