Margaret Maitland received her Hon. B.A in Ancient Near Eastern Studies from the University of Toronto and her M.Phil. and D.Phil. in Egyptology from the University of Oxford. She is a trustee of the Egypt Exploration Society and also leads the Scottish Egyptology Collections Network.

Maitland worked as a trainee Egyptology curator in the Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan at the British Museum as part of their Future Curators programme, where she helped curate the UK touring exhibition ‘Pharaoh: King of Egypt’. She also worked with the Egyptian collection at the Great North Museum: Hancock in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and helped curate their exhibition ‘Catastrophe! The Looting and Destruction of Iraq’s Past’.

Maitland has carried out fieldwork in the Middle Kingdom tomb-chapels of Middle Egypt, and participated in excavations at the Ramesside town and temple site of Kom Firin in Egypt with the British Museum, the Tell Madaba Archaelogical Project in Jordan with the University of Toronto, and at Tell el-Masha’la, a late predynastic-early Dynastic settlement and cemetery in the Eastern Delta in Egypt. She has also led archaeological tours in Egypt and Sudan. Maitland writes an Egyptology blog, 'The Eloquent Peasant', and her blogging of the looting of antiquities that took place during the Egyptian Revolution was reported worldwide.

In 2012, she was appointed Curator of the Ancient Mediterranean at National Museums Scotland, where she curates the Ancient Mediterranean collections, including archaeology from ancient Egypt and Sudan, the Near East and Cyprus, and the classical civilisations of Greece and Rome, with an emphasis on managing the Ancient Egyptian collections.

Her main research interests include Middle Kingdom literature and art, particularly tomb-chapel decoration and tomb models, representations of social identity and hierarchy, and the early history of Egyptology.  

Email: m.maitland@nms.ac.uk

Selected publications

1. Maitland, M (2017), The Tomb: Ancient Egyptian Burial, Edinburgh: NMS Enterprises Ltd.
2. Maitland, M (2017), ‘One Theban Tomb, 1000 Years of Burial’, Egyptian Archaeology 50, 44-46.
3. Troalen, LG, Tissot, I, Maitland, M, Guerra, MF (2016), ‘Jewellery of an Egyptian young girl: Middle Kingdom goldwork from Harageh tomb 72’, Historical Metallurgy 47 (1).
4. Maitland, M (in press), ‘Chauchitza at National Museums Scotland’ in Shapland, A (ed.), Archaeology behind the battle lines: Macedonia 1915–1919 (Cambridge and Athens: British School in Athens and Cambridge University Press).
5. Irving, R and Maitland, M (2015), ‘An innovative antiquarian: Alexander Henry Rhind’s excavations in Egypt and his collection in National Museums Scotland’ in Cooke, N, and Daubney, V (eds.), Every traveller needs a compass: Travel and collecting in Egypt and the Near East (Oxbow, Oxford), 85–100.
6. Maitland, M (2015), ‘Hieroglyphs from the North: Newcastle's early travellers in Egypt and their correspondence with Jean-Francois Champollion’ in Cooke, N, and Daubney, V (eds.), Every traveller needs a compass: Travel and collecting in Egypt and the Near East (Oxbow, Oxford), 113–130.
7. Clarysse, W, Maitland, M and Worp, K (2014), ‘Mummy labels from Graeco-Roman Egypt in National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh’, Chronique d’Égypte 89 (178), 356–375.
8. Maitland, M (2012), Pharaoh: King of Egypt (London: British Museum Press).
9. Maitland, M (2012), ‘Pharaoh: Ideal and Reality’, Egyptian Archaeology 40, 37–39.
10. Maitland, M (2011), Catalogue entries in Quest for Eternity: The Bolton Museum Collection (Taipei: National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall), 16–17, 50, 65, 68, 70–71, 109, 134–35, 143, 155, 202. 

For further publications see: National Museums Scotland Research Repository.