John Gee
John Gee is an Egyptologist and apologist. At Brigham Young University, he is the William (Bill) Gay Research Chair and a Senior Research Fellow at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. He is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Gee was born in 1964. He served as a Greek-speaking missionary in Chicago, Illinois. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Near Eastern Studies from Brigham Young University and his master’s degree in Near Eastern Studies from University of California, Berkeley. He then earned his PhD in Egyptology at Yale University. Ancient Egyptian ritual purity was the subject of dissertation.
He taught at Yale University and worked in the Department of Egyptian Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He is the only Egyptologist from North America affiliated with the Totenbuch-Projekt of the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn. At BYU, he is an editor for the Studies in the Book of Abraham series and a member of the editorial board of the Eastern Christian Texts series.
Gee has presented papers at Egyotological conferences in Atlanta, Baltimore, Berkeley, Bonn, Boston, Brussels, Budapest, Cambridge (Massachusetts), Copenhagen, Giza, Grenoble, Jersey City, Laie, Leuven, London, New Haven, Paris, Philadelphia, Prague, Providence, Reading, Rhodes, San Diego, Seattle, Stevenage, Toledo, Toronto, Tucson, Vancouver, Warsaw, and Washington D.C.
He has published Egyptological work widely. He serves on the board of trustees of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities and as editor of the Journal of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities. He also serves on the program committee for the Egyptology and Ancient Israel Section of the Society of Biblical Literature.
He was also on the board of directors for the Aziz S. Atiya Fund for Coptic Studies at the University of Utah. He has participated in the David M. Kennedy Center for International Studies, International Association for Coptic Studies, the Society of Biblical Literature, and the American Research Center in Egypt.
In Mormon apologetics, he is prominent in defending the authenticity of the Book of Abraham and has presented lectures and papers on the Joseph Smith Papyri.
He and his wife, the former Kathleen Reynolds, live in Utah County with their children.
