Lanny Bell
Adjunct Professor:
Egyptology
Phone:
Biography
Professor Lanny Bell received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Egyptology from the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago in 1963. He then received his Doctor of Philosophy degree in Egyptology from the Oriental Studies Department of the University of Pennsylvania in 1976. Professor Bell served on the faculty of the University of Chicago until 1996 when he opted to take early retirement in order to pursue his broad-based humanistic research as an independent scholar. He returned to teaching almost immediately, however, and was appointed an Adjunct Professor of Egyptology at Brown University in 1997. He has also taught at the Rhode Island School of Design and at Columbia University.
Professor Bell has taught graduate, undergraduate and extension courses in Egyptology since 1965; his courses over the years have included language classes in Old, Middle and Late Egyptian, as well as Coptic; literature in translation; art, architecture and archaeology; culture and history; and epigraphy.
Professor Bell has been extremely active in Egypt; conducting seventeen seasons of fieldwork in Luxor since 1967 and leading 26 tours since 1973. From 1977 to 1989, he was Field Director of the Epigraphic Survey of the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago and in 1988 he was elected a Corresponding Member of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut in Berlin. From 1985 to 1989, Professor Bell co-directed an international fundraising campaign which resulted in the establishment of two entirely new endowments, worth a total of more than US$ 4.35 million, to support the documentary work of the Epigraphic Survey.