Associate

W. Raymond Johnson grew up on the coast of Maine, attended college at Tulane University in New Orleans, and received his doctorate in Egyptian Archaeology from the University of Chicago in 1992 with his dissertation entitled An Asiatic Battle Scene of Tutankhamun from Thebes: A Late Amarna Antecedent of the Ramesside Battle Narrative Tradition. He has participated in excavations at the site of Fort William Henry in Colonial Pemaquid, Maine (State of Maine); at Chogha Mish, Iran, with Professor Helene Kantor (University of Chicago); at Quseir Al-Qadim on the Red Sea coast of Egypt with Professor Jan Johnson and Don Whitcomb (Chicago); and at Carthage, Tunisia with Professor Larry Stager (Chicago and Harvard). 

Ray joined the Epigraphic Survey, based at Chicago House in Luxor, Egypt, full time in 1979 as epigraphic draftsman, where he helped document the Opet reliefs of Tutankhamun in the great Colonnade Hall of Luxor Temple and began the Luxor Temple Fragment Project. He served as Senior Artist from 1982, became Assistant Director in 1995, and was appointed Epigraphic Survey Director in 1997. He retired from that position after 25 years in 2022, the longest-serving director - and staff member - in its history. He is now an Associate of the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures; project director of the Memphis Amenhotep III Reused Block Project; and director of the Amarna Talatat Project where he is reconstructing wall scenes from the stone monuments of Akhenaten and Nefertiti's cult city to the Aten. 

In 2024 and 2025 he held a Bicentennial Fellowship at the Torino Museo Egizio to study the museum’s collection of Amarna blocks for publication. In 2024 he joined the Memphis Hathor Temple Joint American-Egyptian Mission of the Houston, Texas Museum of Natural Science as epigraphic consultant. He and James B. Heidel are currently co-directing the Karnak Third Pylon Documentation Project with the Centre Franco-Égyptien d’Étude des Temples de Karnak/CFEETK, begun in 2025, digitally drawing the reliefs of Amenhotep III and Amenhotep IV/Akhenaten on the eastern face of the north pylon tower. 

Ray served as Wm. Kelly Simpson Visiting Professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo in the Fall of 2025 where he taught a class on the development of the artistic styles of Amenhotep III and Akhenaten. He is also working with the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities and Supreme Council of Antiquities on the identification, analysis, and joining of Karnak and Amarna talatat blocks in various storage magazines, some of them destined for the Akhenaten Museum in Minya displays currently under development.