Daniel González León

Daniel González León obtained his PhD in Egyptology from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in 2023. For his dissertation, he studied the non-royal Old and Middle Kingdom court title imȝ-ʿ “Gracious of Arm” from a prosopographic and epigraphic perspective. In order to help him to complete his thesis, Daniel was awarded a fellowship from the Basque Government Department of Education (2018–2022), and enjoyed funded research stays at the British Museum, Harvard University, and Czech Institute of Egyptology (Charles University). The main output of this study is envisaged to be published as a monograph.

Daniel’s increasing interest in hieroglyphic paleography, which highlights the importance of the semantic and semiotic information of the sign when deciphering the meaning of titles, led him to start the palaeographic study of the Coptos decrees at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. To better address the most minute detail of the sign needed to such study, the new photography-based techniques of Photogrammetry and Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) are used. The project was initially made possible through the museum’s Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in History of Art and Visual Culture (2022–2023) and continues to be developed at Yale University and the University of the Basque Country, with funding from the Basque Government Department of Education (2024–2028). Both the paleography and the re-edition of these texts are intended to be published in an Egyptological monographic series.

He was a fellow of the research project “Studies on Ancient Egyptian Funerary Epigraphy of the Memphite Region” and is currently involved in its successor, “Craft Priests in Ancient Egypt: The Memphite Priesthood: People, Spaces, Activities”, both funded by the Spanish Government Ministry of Science and Innovation (2020–2027; dir.: Josep Cervelló Autuori). His research under these projects has predominantly focused on the figure of Imephor Impy Nikauptah; the scientific interest on this “Greatest of the Directors of Craftsmen” (title known as “High Priest of Ptah”), probably dated to the First Intermediate Period, relies on his rare tomb location, tomb and funerary equipment, and titulary.

In addition to his research, he has taught Egyptian Epigraphy and Palaeography (2018–2022) and Egyptian Texts I (2022) in the Egyptology graduate program at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, earning the position of Adjunct Professor in 2022. He is also Assistant Editor of the monographic series Aula Aegyptiaca-Studia. As epigraphist, he has participated in The Giza Project at Harvard University (2019–2020; dir.: Peter Der Manuelian) and, since 2019, has been a member of the Spanish-Egyptian Archaeological Mission in Saqqara (SEAMS), a project which has primarily operated on the small necropolis of Kom el-Khamaseen. Daniel, along with the directors of the later excavation, Josep Cervelló Autuori & Mohammad Youssef, is currently editing the final report on the work conducted in this necropolis, which will be published as a monograph.