The Cairo University-Brown University Expedition to the Abu Bakr Cemetery at Giza, Egypt

Ed had always been interested in archaeology, but knew he wanted to be an Egyptologist from age 11 when he read Eloise Jarvis McGraw's Mara: Daughter of the Nile, a love story about a beautiful slave girl played out against the rivalry between Hatshepsut and Thutmose III. Mara escapes bondage and wins her handsome count. Enamored as Ed was with ancient Egypt, he did not know how to become an Egyptologist. While pursuing a B. A. in Classical History and Archaeology at the State University of New York, one of Ed's professors who learned about the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago at a conference in that city, encouraged Ed to apply for admission to the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, where he matriculated in 1966.

At the Oriental Institute, one of the foremost research centers for the study of ancient Egypt and the Near East, founded by James Henry Breasted in 1919 with funds provided by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Ed studied Egyptian language with the likes of John A. Wilson (Old Egyptian), Klaus Baer (Middle Egyptian, Coptic), Edward F. Wente (Late Egyptian), George R. Hughes (Demotic), and Egyptian and Ancient Near Eastern archaeology with the formidable Helen J. Kantor. Dr. Kantor and Prof. Pinhas Delougaz, co-directors of the Joint Iranian Expedition of the University of Chicago and the University of California at Los Angeles invited Ed to participate as Ford Foundation Archaeological Fellow in the 1969-1970 field season at Chogha Mish ("Mound of the Ewe") in Khuzestan, Iran. Chogha Mish IV lasted for eight months during which Ed developed an appreciation of the early cultures of the Suziana plain as well as abiding love of Iran and its people.

Provided with a free round-trip ticket to and from Iran, Ed paid his first visit to Egypt in September and October 1969 (in the company of his future wife, psychoanalyst and Egyptologist Del Nord). A mere ten days in Egypt confirmed him in his love of both the land of the pharaohs and modern Egypt. Upon his return from Chogha Mish, Ed returned to classwork and, in 1973, was admitted to candidacy for the Ph. D. degree.

In Fall, 1973, Ed helped organize the Annual Meeting of the American Research Center in Egypt, held at the Oriental Institute. During the meeting he presented his first professional paper on "The Doors of Heaven," and also met the late Prof. William Kelly Simpson, Curator of Egyptian and Ancient Near Eastern Art at The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Professor of Egyptology at Yale University, a fortuitous meeting that ultimately led to Ed's appointment as Curatorial Assistant at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in June 1974. In Boston, Ed became acquainted with the Old Kingdom collection in Boston, acquired through the excavations of George Andrew Reisner on the Giza Plateau, a collection unrivaled outside the Egyptian Museum, Cairo. In time he became Curator of Egyptian and Ancient Near Eastern Art, then Research Curator in Egyptian Art. At present, as Adjunct Research Scholar, he is charged with publishing the excavations of George Andrew Reisner at Giza and Naga ed-Deir. The most recent outcome is Edward Brovarski, Naga ed-Dêr in the First Intermediate Period published by Lockwood Press in cooperation with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2018).