Two new curators are joining the scientific team of the National Museum of Antiquities in 2019. Dr Jasper de Bruin will take up his position on 1 January as curator of the collection ‘The Netherlands in Roman times’. The Egyptologist Dr Daniel Soliman will be taking up his post in mid-February as the successor to professor Maarten Raven, who is retiring after a forty-year museum career.

Two collections: The Netherlands in Roman times and Egypt

Both De Bruin and Soliman, with their wide-ranging academic expertise and networks, will make important contributions to the research on the museum’s collection and its collecting areas, as well as to their presentation, both to the general public and to the academic world. De Bruin will initially focus mainly on opening up the collection of the Netherlands in Roman times to make it more accessible in digital form. This part of the museum’s collection, the largest of its kind in the Netherlands, can play a key role in improving the visibility of the limes, the border line of the Roman Empire in the Netherlands. Soliman, besides familiarising himself with the world-famous Egypt collection and conducting his own research, will also be involved in the museum’s annual excavations in the New Kingdom necropolis around the pyramid of Djoser in Saqqara.

Dr Jasper de Bruin

Dr Jasper de Bruin (b. 1976) studied ‘Archaeology of the Roman period’ at the University of Amsterdam and was awarded his doctorate in 2017 at the University of Leiden with a dissertation on the Canninefates. In 2006 he took up a position as a lecturer and researcher at the Faculty of Archaeology of the University of Leiden, focusing primarily on northwest Europe in the Roman period, the local population, the limes, and exchange networks. De Bruin has twice been nominated for the Teaching Prize of the University of Leiden. From his base at the university he has led excavations including those of the early mediaeval settlement in Oegstgeest. In the framework of the Odyssey Programme of the NWO (the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research) De Bruin conducted and published a research project on the Roman port in Goedereede (2010–2012). He has also contributed on countless occasions to archaeological reports as a specialist in the realm of pottery and metal finds from the Roman period.

Dr Daniel Soliman

Dr Daniel Soliman (b. 1985) studied Egyptology at the University of Leiden. In 2016 he was awarded a doctorate at this university for an NWO project on the system of identifying marks of the workmen who constructed the tombs in the Valley of the Kings (near present-day Luxor). After gaining his PhD he was appointed as a post-doc at the Faculty of Egyptology of the University of Copenhagen. Since the beginning of 2018 Soliman has worked as the chief curator at the British Museum within the project ‘Circulating Artefacts’, for which he researches the ancient and modern background and authenticity of Pharaonic objects on the art market and in private collections. As an expert in the area of the New Kingdom of Ancient Egypt (c. 1539–1077 BC), Soliman has produced numerous reports, publications, and presentations, both in the Netherlands and in international fora.