Naval Harbour of Thasos

Dr. Jean-Yves Empereur, Emeritus Director of Research for CNRS, was born in France and educated in Paris (Sorbonne University, Agrégation des Lettres, PhD and HDR). In 1978, he became a Scientific Fellow and, in 1982, General Secretary of the French School of Archaeology at Athens. In 1990, he moved to Egypt, where he founded the Centre for Alexandrian Studies (CEAlex), a permanent team of the French National Scientific Research Centre (CNRS) based in Alexandria. Over a quarter of a century, Empereur conducted a series of salvage excavations in the capital of the Ptolemies, including part of the western necropolis and the underwater site of Alexandria’s ancient lighthouse. Since 2015, he has shared his time between Alexandria and working on the publication of his excavations in Cyprus, Greece and Turkey, especially Greek harbour studies and the history of Hellenistic trade in the eastern Mediterranean.