John Lewis Romer is a renowned British Egyptologist, historian, and archaeologist, having created and appeared in numerous television archaeology series, including Romer's Egypt, Ancient Lives, Testament, The Seven Wonders of the World, Byzantium: The Lost Empire, and Great Excavations: The Story of Archaeology.
Born in Surrey, England, Romer was educated at Ottershaw School, a state boarding school near Woking, Surrey, and the Royal College of Art in London. His educational background was in epigraphic studies of painting and drawing, which ultimately led him to pursue a career in archaeology. He then worked as an artist in Persepolis and Cairo, where he drew and studied ancient inscriptions.
Romer began his archaeological work in 1966, when he participated in the University of Chicago's Epigraphic Survey at the temples and tombs of the ancient Egyptian site of Thebes, modern-day Luxor. From 1977 to 1979, he led a major expedition to the Valley of the Kings, which conducted the first excavation there since the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb in 1922. In 1979, he headed the Brooklyn Museum's expedition to excavate the tomb of Ramesses XI.
In 1979, Romer and his wife, Elizabeth Romer, also an archaeologist and designer, founded The Theban Foundation in Berkeley, California, a body dedicated to the conservation and documentation of the Royal Tombs of Thebes. One of the outcomes of this was the creation of the Theban Mapping Project.
Romer has written several books, some co-authored with his wife, including Valley of the Kings, Ancient Lives, Testament, and The Seven Wonders of the World, many of which were televised. His most recent works, A History of Ancient Egypt: From the First Farmers to the Great Pyramid, and A History of Ancient Egypt Volume 2: From the Great Pyramid to the Fall of the Middle Kingdom, were published in 2012 and 2017, respectively.
Today, Romer resides in Tuscany, Italy.
