Dr. Lara Weiss
tel: +31 (0)71 516 3114
e-mail: l.weiss@rmo.nl
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Educational background and special fields of interest

Lara Weiss (b. 1980) studied Egyptology in Berlin and Leiden and was awarded her doctorate in Göttingen in 2012. She takes a particular interest in the everyday lives of the ancient Egyptians and their religious experiences. Both her Master’s dissertation and her doctoral thesis relate to religion in Deir el-Medina, where the artists who decorated the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings lived with their families. Between 2012 and 2015 she was involved as both lecturer and a researcher in the ERC Advanced Grant project ‘Lived Ancient Religion: Questioning “cults” and “polis religion”‘, hosted by the University of Erfurt (Germany). Her research for that project focused on religion in the Roman town of Karanis (in the Fayoum Oasis). Since 2014 she is Curator Egyptian Collections at the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden.

Reorganization of the display of the Egyptian collection and field work at Saqqara

Weiss played a central role in the reorganisation of the display of the Egyptian collection at the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in 2016 and is involved in the various international touring exhibitions. Furthermore, since 2018 she is one of the field directors of the Leiden-Turin Expedition to Saqqara together with Dr. Christian Greco. In 2017 she was awarded a prestigious grant from the Dutch Research Council to lead her own project at Leiden University.

Areas of expertise

• Saqqara
• Interdisciplinary methods and ancient Egypt (especially religious studies and sociology/anthropology)
• Deir el-Medina
• museology

Major research projects

• Leiden-Turin Expedition to Saqqara
• The Walking Dead at Saqqara. The Making of a Cultural Geography (2017-2022)
• Lived Ancient Religion in Karanis (2012-2014)
• Personal religion in Deir el-Medina (2010-2012)