074 / / JANUARY 2017
t the age of three, before she could even read,
Joann Fletcher was fascinated by ancient
Egypt. At nursery school she sketched
Egyptian gods in DayGlo wax crayons, then,
when she was six, the Tutankhamun exhibition came to the
British Museum in London and her fate was sealed.
‘In 1972, Tutankhamun was everywhere and I didn’t talk
about much else,’ says Fletcher, who is now an Egyptologist
and honorary visiting professor in the Department of
Archaeology at the University of York. ‘My Mum told me it was
possible to get a job as an Egyptologist, so from then on that
was what I was going to be,’ she says.
Fletcher went on to take ‘A’ levels at her local sixth-form
college, then applied to University College London (UCL) to
take the ‘best Egyptology course ever’. She remembers going
for her interview, aged 17, and saying: ‘If you don’t accept me
this time, I’ll just keep coming back.’
Luckily, she was offered a place on UCL’s degree in Ancient
History and Egyptology, which she completed in 1987. She
went on to take a PhD at the University of Manchester, then
become a self-employed Egyptologist and began working
with the University of York. While there, she co-founded
the Mummy Research Group. ‘I’m the luckiest person on the
planet, I really enjoy what I do,’ she says.
A specialist in ancient Egyptian hair, nails and soft tissue,
Fletcher often goes into the field to advise on mummified
human remains. Over the years, she has made numerous
visits to Egypt’s Valley of the Kings: in 2003 she helped to
identify three mummies that had been discovered in 1898.
Her controversial theory, that one of the bodies could be of
the female pharaoh Nefertiti, is now becoming more accepted.
As well as being involved in fieldwork, museum curation,
laboratory analysis and teaching, Fletcher has written many
scientific articles and appeared in numerous documentaries,
including the recent BBC series Immortal Egypt with Joann
Fletcher, which she wrote and presented, and Mummifying
Alan: Egypt’s Last Secret, which showed how to mummify the
donated body of taxi driver Alan Billis.
Being an Egyptologist doesn’t just take her to Egypt,
however. Fletcher has also studied remains in Yemen,
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A
After seeing Tutankhamun’s
golden death mask (above)
aged six, Joann Fletcher
(right) knew that she wanted
to be an Egyptologist