Oren Siegel

Assistant Professor of Egyptian Archaeology (CLTA)
Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, 4 Bancroft Avenue, Room 409, Toronto, ON, M5S 1C1

Campus

Fields of Study

Areas of Interest

  • The archaeology and material culture of Egypt and Nubia
  • Boundaries and border-making in the Pharaonic world
  • Relationships between the built environment and political power in ancient Egypt
  • Urbanism in Ancient Egypt
  • Landscape archaeology and the use of remote sensing/aerial photography to reconstruct Pharaonic landscapes
  • State formation in the lower Nile Valley and Delta

Biography

I received my PhD with honors from University of Chicago in 2020 in Near Eastern Art and Archaeology with a specialization in Egyptian Archaeology. My research interests include boundaries and border-making in the Pharaonic world, ancient Egyptian urbanism, and interactions between the built environment and political power. My dissertation investigated the development and symbolism of monumental enclosure walls in Egypt prior to the New Kingdom, and my current focus is on revising this into a book project. 

As a field archaeologist, I have worked at Mendes, Tell Edfu, Dendara, Aswan, and Uronarti and I am a member of the Aswan-Kom Ombo Archaeological Project and the Uronarti Regional Archaeological Project. Prior to the appointment at University of Toronto in 2023, I was a postdoctoral researcher and digital specialist for the Borderscape Project at the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw. There, my work focused on reconstructing the ancient landscape and settlement pattern during the periods before, during, and after the formation of the Pharaonic state.

Education

PhD, University of Chicago