Dr. Jason Silvestri is a professional Egyptologist and archaeologist, currently based in Cambridge, England (UK). Originally hailing from Massachusetts (USA), he received his BA (hons.) degree from the University of Toronto – St. George Campus (University College) with a Specialist in Ancient Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, and two minors, one in German and one in Arabic. He completed an MA in Near Eastern Studies in 2021, prior to receiving his PhD in Egyptian Art and Archaeology in 2026, both at the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently elected Lady Wallis Budge Junior Research Fellow in Egyptology at Christ’s College, Cambridge.
His current book-project, entitled Violent Priests, Pious Warlords, and Libyan Elders, utilizes his own critical re-translation of over 220 textual primary sources and proposes a new framework for understanding the nature and entanglement of non-state political logics during the Libyan Period (Dyns. XXI-XXIV; ca. 1070-720 BCE) in Egypt. The Libyan Period is contemporary to the Early Iron Age elsewhere in the greater Mediterranean and Southwest Asian worlds and, in Egypt, constitutes period long understood to be marked by the weakening of centralized state control and a proliferation of regional and non-state modes of authority.
Jason also has received training in Amazigh Studies and the linguistics of languages belonging to the broader ‘Berber’ branch of the Afro-Asiatic language superfamily. His 2024 article in Études et Documents Berbères presents the so-called ‘Qeheq Papyrus’ (pQeheq = pTurin Cat. 2106/380 = CGT 54030) as the oldest (ca. 13th-12th cent. BCE) datable testimony of a (para-)Berber language, namely the Ancient Libyan Qeheq language, pushing back the secure dating of the ‘Berber’ branch of Afro-Asiatic just over a millennium older than previously thought.
Jason also co-directs the American archaeological mission to the site of el-Hibeh, in Beni Suef Governorate (Arab Republic of Egypt). His work on the el-Hibeh Project is focused on the often overlooked settlement contexts of Libyan Period date, and aims to complicate the models he has proposed for Libyan Period socio-political and economic structures with fresh and interdisciplinary archaeological perspectives, drawn from collaboration with an international team of specialists in bio-archaeology (human osteology, zooarchaeology, paleobotany, etc.), ceramics, textile production, Egyptological epigraphy, papyrology, and other related disciplines.
Dr Jason Silvestri 