Dr. Maria Cannata (Beijing University) completed her D.Phil. in Egyptology at the University of Oxford with a specialisation in Funerary Culture and Demotic Studies. Her main research interests lay in social history, especially that of the Late and the Greco-Roman periods in Egypt, and all of her work to date has focused on bringing a cross-disciplinary perspective into the study of the funerary sphere in Egypt. Her doctoral studies focused on the organisation of the Ptolemaic funerary industry in Egypt and were based on the countrywide analysis of both archaeological and textual evidence, highlighting not only the identity of the officials in control of necropolises, and the competences of various priests in the embalming, funeral, burial, and mortuary cult of the deceased, but also the resilience of the Egyptians’ funerary beliefs, and the great degree of continuity in this sphere during this period. She has taught widely in Egyptology both in the UK and in China, and has served on the Board of Trustees of the Egypt Exploration Society, and as academic journals editor. She has taken part in excavations in Egypt and is currently part of Dr. Penny Wilson’s team working at Sais (Sa el-Hagar) in the Nile Delta.
