In 1964, David O’Connor, a 26-year-old Australian Ph.D. candidate in Egyptian Archaeology at the University of Cambridge, came to the University of Pennsylvania at the invitation of Museum Director, Froelich Rainey, with the goal of restarting the Museum’s excavations in Egypt. O’Connor remained at Penn for three decades, until 1995, and his work had a tremendous impact on the Museum’s Egyptian Section and its collections. This issue is dedicated to O’Connor and examines his legacy with a series of articles, many contributed by his former students and colleagues.
Arriving in Philadelphia fresh from excavations at Buhen in Sudan, O’Connor was given the enviable task of going to Egypt to identify possible sites for a long-term archaeological investigation. Due to the participation of the Pennsylvania-Yale Expedition during the early 1960s in the international salvage excavations in Lower Nubia, Penn had the opportunity to apply for work at a site within Egypt itself. After a visit to Egypt in 1965–1966 and detailed consideration of many prospective sites in both the Nile Valley and Delta, O’Connor applied for the site of Abydos, in the southern part of Middle Egypt, about 300 miles south of Cairo. One of the most important sites in the Nile Valley, with archaeological remains spanning five millennia from the Predynastic Period through Late Antiquity (ca. 4000 BCE–600 CE), Abydos offered great potential for renewed research. By 1966, O’Connor had received permission to work in North Abydos, which initiated the Pennsylvania-Yale Expedition to Abydos under the combined directorship of O’Connor and William Kelly Simpson of Yale University and the Peabody Museum of Natural History.
Upon starting work at Abydos in 1967, O’Connor built a house to support the field staff. At that time, an abandoned house that had been used by John Garstang of the University of Liverpool still stood at Abydos. The location was a good one, situated on the floor of a low desert valley that ran through the cemeteries of Abydos. In ancient times, this sacred valley formed the processional route that led from the main town of Abydos and temple of Osiris— today called the Kom es-Sultan—to the Early Dynastic royal necropolis—the site today called Umm el-Qa’ab— where the Egyptians believed the god Osiris himself was buried. Because the ancient Egyptians kept this valley free of tombs and other buildings, a dig house could be built there without fear of intruding on or covering over ancient remains. O’Connor dismantled the Garstang house and built the Pennsylvania-Yale house on the same site. In designing the new house, O’Connor adapted his design from the dig house he had lived in during work with W.B. Emery at Buhen in Sudan. The Buhen house was, in fact, the original University of Pennsylvania house used during the Eckley Coxe Expedition to Lower Nubia in 1909–1911. It had been refurbished by the Egypt Exploration Society in the 1950s before being submerged beneath Lake Nasser in 1962. Under O’Connor’s guidance, the spirit of the old Buhen house was fortuitously reborn at Abydos.
Large-scale excavations at Abydos were conducted in 1967–1969 focusing on the area of the Portal Temple of Ramses II. Vincent C. Pigott, a team member of the 1968 season, contributes a retrospective to this issue recalling his memorable experiences in that work. Important material from the 1960s excavations was included in a division of finds to the Penn Museum made by the Egyptian Antiquities Organization. This group of objects includes the magnificent Osiride statue (69-291), one of the iconic artifacts of the Museum’s Egyptian galleries. This statue is currently scheduled for a major new remounting in the renovated Upper Egyptian gallery, as discussed in the article by Kevin M. Cahail. Between 1970 and 1977, there was a hiatus in work at Abydos, which led O’Connor to excavate with Barry Kemp for several seasons at the 18th Dynasty palace site of Amenhotep III at Malkata on the west bank of Thebes, modern Luxor. Material from the Malkata excavations was also part of the division of finds by the Egyptian government—as discussed in this issue by Jennifer Houser Wegner—and forms the last group of archaeological material directly excavated by the Penn Museum to be accessioned into the Egyptian Section in 1981. The site of Malkata itself has turned out to be only part of an extensive zone of activity at Thebes during the reign of the 18th Dynasty king Amenhotep III, as Zahi Hawass discusses in his article on the recent discovery of the city of Tjehen-Aten.
After resuming work at Abydos in 1977, O’Connor continued excavations in the area of North Abydos, at that time developing a series of research projects and collaborations with Penn graduate students and others. This work included the Predynastic regional survey of Diana Patch, as well as excavations in the Kom es-Sultan by Matthew Adams, North and Middle Cemeteries by Janet Richards, and the Thutmose III chapel by MaryAnn Pouls Wegner, among others. Further to the south, in areas of Abydos not included in the original Penn concession, the Pennsylvania-Yale Expedition applied for work at the Ahmose pyramid complex (directed by Stephen Harvey) and the mortuary complex of Senwosret III (directed by Josef Wegner). Over the years these projects have continued to evolve in new directions with other researchers becoming involved in the rich archaeology of Abydos. Excavations at South Abydos today form the focus of the Penn Museum’s work as discussed in the articles by Josef W. Wegner and Rolland Long. Renewed work in the area of the pyramid complex of Ahmose by a combined Egyptian-American project directed by Deborah Vischak and Ayman Damarany is shedding new light on the monuments of King Ahmose, which is also discussed by Emily Smith-Sangster. In addition to excavation, initiatives in site management and cultural heritage have become increasingly important as discussed in this issue’s articles on the new visitor building for the tomb of Seneb-Kay and the restoration of the Tetisheri pyramid chapel.
After leaving Penn in 1995, David O’Connor completed his later career as Professor of Egyptology at New York University’s (NYU) Institute of Fine Arts. There, O’Connor encouraged other research at Abydos including dissertation projects, as well as the ongoing NYU project developed by Ogden Goelet and Sameh Iskander at the Ramses II temple, as the article by Sameh Iskander discusses. Today, archaeology at Abydos continues to thrive with a variety of ongoing field projects by both American and Egyptian missions, much of what is happening reflecting the encouragement and guidance that O’Connor brought to the site. Even after he stopped excavating in 2002, O’Connor’s particular interest in the archaeology of earliest Egypt remained an important aspect of his research as discussed in the contribution by Matthew Adams. O’Connor’s career at Abydos was capped by his 2009 book, Abydos: Egypt’s First Pharaohs and the Cult of Osiris, the first comprehensive synthesis of the archaeology and history of the site.
Even after he left the University of Pennsylvania in 1995, O’Connor maintained a strong interest in the collection and galleries. His three decades as Curator at the Penn Museum had included major exhibitions such as The Search for Ancient Egypt, and the installation of what was long the Museum’s most popular show: The Egyptian Mummy: Secrets and Science. Apart from material in the collection from his own excavations at Abydos and Malkata, O’Connor was particularly interested the Nubian collections excavated between 1907–1911 by the Coxe Expedition, as well as the magnificent remains of the Palace of Merenptah from Mit Rahina. During his time at Penn, O’Connor had a deep fascination with the Merenptah Palace and often spoke of future opportunities to reimagine that important material in the Museum’s displays. This issue closes with a brief look by Kevin M. Cahail at the Museum’s developing plans to finally reinstall the Merenptah Palace, as well as the Nubia galleries as part of the Museum’s Ancient Egypt and Nubia reinstallation project. After many years of planning, that transformative project officially entered its construction phase in 2023. As we explore in this issue of Expedition, the various areas of fieldwork in Egypt, as well as the Penn Museum’s collections and gallery initiatives, are interwoven with David O’Connor’s deep and lasting role in the Museum’s Egyptian Section.
JOSEF W. WEGNER, PH.D.