Erik Hornung is an Egyptologist and one of the most influential modern writers on the Ancient Egyptian religion. He is Professor Emeritus of Basle University.

Biography

Hornung was born in Riga

Riga

Riga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. With 702,891 inhabitants Riga is the largest city of the Baltic states, one of the largest cities in Northern Europe and home to more than one third of Latvia's population. The city is an important seaport and a major industrial, commercial,...

, Latvia

Latvia

Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...

 in 1933 and gained his PH.D. at the University of Tübingen in 1956. He was Professor of Egyptology at the University of Basel

University of Basel

The University of Basel is located in Basel, Switzerland, and is considered to be one of leading universities in the country...

 from 1967 to 1998. His main research field has been funerary literature, the Valley of the Kings

Valley of the Kings

The Valley of the Kings , less often called the Valley of the Gates of the Kings , is a valley in Egypt where, for a period of nearly 500 years from the 16th to 11th century BC, tombs were constructed for the Pharaohs and powerful nobles of the New Kingdom .The valley stands on the west bank of...

 in particular. He published the first edition of the Book of Amduat

Amduat

The Amduat is an important Ancient Egyptian funerary text of the New Kingdom. Like many funerary texts, it was found written on the inside of the pharaoh's tomb for reference...

in three volumes between 1963 and 1967. J. Gwyn Griffiths

J. Gwyn Griffiths

John Gwyn Griffiths , was a Welsh poet, Egyptologist and nationalist political activist who spent the largest span of his career lecturing at Swansea University.-Early history:...

 described Hornung as the foremost authority in such literature. His book Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt, The One and the Many has become his best known work in which he concludes, whilst acknowledging previous work by Henri Frankfort

Henri Frankfort

Henri 'Hans' Frankfort was a Dutch Egyptologist, archaeologist and orientalist.-Biography:Born in Amsterdam, Frankfort studied history at the University of Amsterdam and then moved to London, where in 1924, he took an MA under Sir Flinders Petrie at the University College. In 1927 he gained a...

 and his "multiplicity of approaches" and John A. Wilson

John A. Wilson (Egyptologist)

John Albert Wilson was an American Egyptologist who was the Andrew MacLeish Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago....

's "complementary" treatment of Egyptian modes of thought, that "Anyone who takes history seriously will not accept a single method as definitive; the same should be true of anyone who takes belief seriously". Hornung became Vice-President of the Society of the Friends of the Royal Tombs of Egypt in 1988. His books have been published in German, but many have been translated into English.

Select bibliography

• Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt, The One and the Many, 1982 (Translated by John Baines
  John Baines
  John Baines is the incumbent Professor of Egyptology at the University of Oxford and a fellow of The Queen's College. He is the author of multiple scholarly articles and publications relating to ancient Egyptian civilization....
  
  , original German edition 1971)
• The Valley of the Kings: Horizon of Eternity, 1990
• The Tomb of Pharaoh Seti I, 1991
• History of Ancient Egypt. An Introduction, 1999
• Akhenaten and the Religion of Light, 1999
• The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife, 1999
• The Secret Lore of Egypt, 2001