Associate

Mark Lehner is director and president of Ancient Egypt Research Associates, Inc. (AERA), an American nonprofit and NGO.

Starting in 1979, he spent five years mapping the Great Sphinx stone by stone. He then began the Giza Plateau Mapping Project to understand how the pyramid builders organized and transformed the landscape of the Giza Plateau. In 1988, he began excavations at the Heit el-Ghurab (HeG) site, the location of the settlement and infrastructure of the 4th Dynasty (ca. 2600 BCE) pyramid builders. Excavations at HeG have uncovered a 10 acre settlement that housed and fed the pyramid builders and served as a major Nile port.

In 1991 he joined the OI (now the ISAC) at the University of Chicago, but left his tenure track position to return to Egypt and save the HeG from urban expansion. To pursue this mission, he established AERA, which has grown into one of the largest archaeological missions and research centers in Egypt. 

AERA continues to sponsor annual excavations of the HeG with an international, interdisciplinary team. To investigate the larger Giza settlement context, AERA also excavates the nearby Menkaure Valley Temple and Khentkawes Town sites. These sites flourished as people abandoned the HeG and expand the settlement record at Giza to its end in the Sixth Dynasty.

AERA has also created a comprehensive field school program for young Egyptian archaeologists that has trained more than 350 archaeologists working as Inspectors for Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities in the best practices of scientific archaeology.