Tony Leahy initially studied History at Cambridge before graduating with a BA in Oriental Studies (Egyptology) and proceeding to a PhD on the subject of ‘Abydos in the Late Period’.
He was editor of a leading periodical, the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, from 1985-92 and has subsequently edited numerous archaeological memoirs and commemorative volumes for the Egypt Exploration Society. He was a Committee member of the E.E.S. from 1979-1992 and its Honorary Secretary from 1992-2001. He has also been a Committee member of the Society for Libyan Studies, the Sudan Archaeological Research Society and the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art. He is currently on the editorial board, of the Athlone Egyptology and the Ancient Near East series and the Management Committee of the G.A. Wainwright Fund for Near Eastern Archaeology,
Dr Leahy’s first fieldwork in Egypt was on the Eighteenth Dynasty palace site of Amenhotep III at Malqata on the west bank at Luxor. One of his first publications was a study of the hieratic labels written in ink on pottery amphorae and storage jars that had been delivered to the king’s palace for his jubilees. His most recent fieldwork has been at Saqqara, where he is currently co-director (with Ian Mathieson) of a geophysical survey project, and also its Egyptological advisor. The project is mapping what lies beneath the sand over a large tract of the site of Saqqara west of the Step Pyramid. In the 2001season of work, test excavation of a line of mudbrick structures previously identified by magnetometer survey revealed them to be platforms for now vanished temples of the sixth century BC and later. In 2000, the lost tomb of Nyankhnesut, a high official of the Sixth Dynasty, was identified and its salient features recorded.
His main research area is the history of Egypt in the first millennium BC and much of his work has been done in museum basements. Topics of particular interest to him include: epigraphy and palaeography; the chronological and political structure of the period; the priesthood and the institution of kingship; the religious site of Abydos; personal names as a source for religious and political developments; foreign immigration and social change; cultural interrelationships with the Mediterranean and the Near East. He has encouraged postgraduate researches into burial practices and coffin typology, funerary art, royal iconography, regional topography and the historiographic tradition, as well as the topics listed above.
Dr Leahy has published in American, Belgian, British, Dutch, Egyptian, French, German, Iraqi and Italian books and periodicals.and has also written numerous reviews for journals such as Bibliotheca Orientalis, Chronique d’Egypte, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology and Journal of the American Oriental Society.
‘The tomb of Nyankhnesut (re)discovered’, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 87 (2001), 33-42. (with Ian Mathieson)
Articles on ‘Foreign incursions’, ‘Libya’ and ‘Sea Peoples’ for the Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt (New York, 2001)
‘Libyans’, in The Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, ed. K. Bard (New York and London, 1999), 445-7
‘More fragments of the Book of the Dead of Padinemty’, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 85 (1999), 230-2.
Studies on Ancient Egypt in Honour of H.S. Smith (London, 1999). (ed. with John Tait)
‘In the House of the Phoenix at Thebes (Cairo JE 36938)’, in Studies on Ancient Egypt in Honour of H.S. Smith, ed. A. Leahy and J. Tait (London, 1999), 185-92.
‘Beer for the gods of Memphis in the reign of Amasis’, in Egyptian Religion. The Last Thousand Years, ed. W. Clarysse et al. (Leuven, 1998), 377-92.
‘The Adoption of Ankhnesneferibre at Karnak’, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 82 (1996), 145-63
‘Ethnic diversity in ancient Egypt’, in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, ed. J. Sasson (New York, 1995), 225-34
The Unbroken Reed (London, 1994), (ed. with C. Eyre and L. Montagno Leahy)
‘Kushite monuments at Abydos’, in The Unbroken Reed, ed. C. Eyre, A. Leahy and L. Montagno Leahy (London, 1994), 171-92
‘The Forty Martyrs of Sebaste’, in The Forty Martyrs of Sebasteia , ed. M. Mullett and A. Wilson (Belfast, 1993)
‘The Egyptian names’, in Texts from Nineveh, by Nicholas Postgate and Bahija Khalil Ismail (Baghdad, 1993), 56-62
