James Peter Allen


James Peter Allen is an American Egyptologist, specializing in language and religion. He was curator of Egyptian Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1990 to 2006. In 2007, he became the Charles Edwin Wilbour Professor of Egyptology at Brown University. In 2008, he was elected president of the International Association of Egyptologists. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations.

Early life and education

The oldest of three siblings, Allen was born according to his wife Susan, "into the U.S. Army"... as his father proposed to his mother on an Army requisition form when his father was stationed in Burma. Both parents were in the U.S. Army and Allen was two weeks old when World War 2 ended in Europe. The family moved to Frankfurt, Germany where Allen learned to speak fluent German. In 1953, the family moved to San Antonio, Texas. When the family moved to Baltimore, Allen "bought a copy of Mercer’s An Egyptian Grammar and began learning Middle Egyptian from it."
He attended Saint Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology in Indiana, graduating in 1968 and his thesis “Genesis in
Egypt: the Philosophy of Ancient Egyptian Creation Accounts" would later be published in 1988 as Genesis in Egypt. After receiving a scholarship, Allen moved to the University of Chicago of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations where he was influenced by the writings of linguist Hans Polotsky and began learning Gardiner's sign list and Akkadian. Allen met his future wife, Susan at the University as she was studying Near Eastern archaeology. They were married in 1970.

Career

In 1973, the couple began living part-time in Luxor, Egypt, where Allen "worked for the Epigraphic Survey first at the temple of Khonsu in Karnak, then the Seti Wall on the north side of the Hypostyle Hall and finally the Opet Colonnade in the Luxor Temple." They spent time living in Zamalek, Giza and finally moved to Newport, Rhode Island where he began to teach at Yale University. In 2006 Brown University offered Allen "the Charles Edwin Wilbour Professorshp of Egyptology". It was part of his responsibility to expand their Department of Egyptology into "a full department of Egyptology and Assyriology."
Allen was the "curator of Egyptian art and specialist in the culture's language and religion at the Metropolitan Museum of Art" in 1999. In 2005 his "new translation of the papyrus appears in the exhibition catalog" In 2012 he was working a history of the Egyptian language with the great help of the Demotic dictionary saying 'What the Chicago Demotic Dictionary does is what the Oxford English Dictionary does'"
He is a former President of the International Association of Egyptologists

Publications