Laurent Coulon

Laurent Coulon, a distinguished Egyptologist, serves as Professor at the Collège de France since 2023, holding the chair The Civilization of Pharaonic Egypt. His research integrates archaeology, philology, and anthropology to explore ancient Egyptian religion, particularly the evolution of the Osiris cult from the Old Kingdom to the Mediterranean expansion.

• École normale supérieure alumnus with agrégation in Classics
• Director of the Institut français d'archéologie orientale (2019-2023)

His work spans Pharaonic court dynamics, Osirian imagery, and digital humanities projects like the Late Egyptian Artefact Database. Coulon's publications critically examine religious continuity, literary conventions, and cross-cultural interactions with Classical antiquity.

Recent trends in his research include statuary corpora analysis, temple organizational studies, and anthropological approaches to divine representation. He leads archaeological missions at Karnak and Oxyrhynchos, emphasizing epigraphic and material culture synthesis.