BIBLE HISTORY DAILY

Milestones: Donald B. Redford (1934–2024)

Renowned Egyptologist who reshaped the study of New Kingdom Egypt

Donald Redford (1934–2024). Courtesy Susan Redford.

Donald Redford, renowned Egyptologist and long-time professor of the ancient world at Pennsylvania State University, passed away on October 18, 2024, in State College, Pennsylvania. He was 90 years old.

Redford graduated from the University of Toronto and served there as an associate and then full professor from 1962 to 1998. He then took a position in Penn State’s Department of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies, where he taught until his retirement earlier this year. Throughout his more than 60-year career, he advised more than 30 doctoral students, many of whom have gone on to become highly regarded Egyptologists themselves.

From 1964 to 1967, Redford excavated in the Old City of Jerusalem under the famed British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon. In 1972, he and his wife Susan started the Akhenaten Temple Project in Karnak, which uncovered the oldest-known temple of the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten. He would continue to excavate in the area of Karnak and Thebes until 1991, revealing a major domestic area of the ancient Egyptian capital city. Afterwards, he excavated annually at the site of Mendes in Egypt’s eastern Nile delta. This excavation contributed much to our knowledge of complex society and state formation in Egypt in the late fourth millennium, as well as adding to our understanding of Egyptian history during the Late and Hellenistic periods (c. 700–200 BCE).

In addition his fieldwork, Redford was a prolific scholar, publishing extensively on Egypt and its interactions with the lands of Canaan, Israel, and Syria in antiquity. Among his many books are Akhenaten the Heretic King (Princeton Univ. Press, 1984) and Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times (Princeton Univ. Press, 1992), for which he won the Biblical Archaeology Society’s 1993 award for Best Scholarly Book in Archaeology. Redford was also a well-known public scholar, appearing in many television documentaries about ancient Egypt and writing in popular magazines and journals, including his article “The Monotheism of the Heretic Pharaoh” in the May/June 1987 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

Redford became fascinated by the ancient world at a young age, reading articles in National Geographic. Shortly before his death, he told the Penn State News that his goal was to do the same for his own students. “I’ve ignited, I hope, a certain fire in the bosoms of some young students,” he said. “Frequently over the last ten 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.”