Dr. Nicholas Brown is Assistant Professor of Egyptology in the Department of Classics and Religious Studies at the University of Iowa. He earned his MA in Egyptology from the American University in Cairo and his PhD from UCLA, and has been excavating in Egypt and Sudan since 2011. His fieldwork has taken him to Elephantine Island, Wadi el-Hudi, Luxor, Amarna, and sites in northern Sudan, so he knows Egypt from the trench as well as the lecture hall.
Nick’s research centers on the New Kingdom (ca. 1550–1070 BCE), especially the rituals, burial practices, and ideas of kingship that shaped the royal tombs of the Valley of the Kings. Drawing on archaeology, ancient texts, and art, he looks at how these tombs worked within the wider sacred landscape of Thebes. He directs an ongoing project to re-examine and republish the tomb of Thutmose IV (KV43), and his current book, based on his doctoral work, follows how royal funerary ritual developed in the Valley.
Since 2024, Nick has directed the Deir el-Ballas Expedition, continuing the work he began with former co-director Dr. Peter Lacovara at the royal palace and military settlement that marks Egypt’s passage from the Second Intermediate Period into the New Kingdom. He is also co-editing a volume that pairs the unpublished records of the site’s original 1900 excavations with the modern expedition’s findings. Travelers with Nick get more than a guide to the monuments. They see ancient Egypt through the eyes of someone still uncovering it.
