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World-renowned Egyptologist and North Dakota native Mark Lehner will give a lecture at Minot State’s Ann Nicole Nelson Hall Thursday, May 2, according to a press release from Minot State University.

Lehner is the director and president of Ancient Egypt Research Associates, Inc.

The lecture at Minot State is one part of a weekend of events planned. Lehner is also scheduled to speak at Minot Public Schools and attend Minot State’s annual Alumni Association Gala fundraising event. The Minot State lecture, which is free and open to the public, is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. in Ann Nicole Nelson Hall with a book signing to follow.

“We are honored to have someone with the extensive knowledge that Mark has speaking at Minot State and look forward to welcoming him back to his hometown for this event,” Minot State President Steven Shirley said. “Mark is one of the top Egyptologists in the world and is an expert in the Great Pyramids and the Sphinx at Giza, making him an outstanding guest for our campus.”

Lehner graduated from Minot High School in 1968 and attended Minot State University. He went to Cairo in 1973 as a Year Abroad Student at the American University in Cairo where he received his bachelor’s degree in anthropology. He lived in Egypt for 13 years, working for American, Egyptian, British, French, and German archaeological projects. From 1979 until 1983 he was the field director and then director of the Sphinx Project sponsored by the American Research Center in Egypt.

In 1984, he began the Giza Plateau Mapping Project, sponsored by the American Research Center in Egypt and Yale University where Lehner received his doctorate in Egyptology in 1990.

His nearly 40 years of archaeological research in Egypt includes mapping the Great Sphinx and discovering a major part of the “Lost City of the Pyramids” at Giza.

Since 2005, AERA has conducted archaeological field schools to train young Egyptian archaeologists working for the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities at Giza, Luxor, and Memphis on behalf of the American Research Center in Egypt funded by USAID, the Charles Simonyi Fund for Arts and Sciences, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Lehner has appeared on television in National Geographic’s Explorer program and on the WGBH NOVA series, “Secrets of Lost Empires,” on ancient technology, including “This Old Pyramid and Obelisk.” In 2011, Lehner appeared in NOVA’s “Riddles of the Sphinx.” In February, he was featured on NOVA, “Decoding the Great Pyramid,” and appeared on the Science Channel’s “Unearthed: Secret History of the Sphinx.” He is author of “The Complete Pyramids,” published in 1997 by Thames and Hudson and the co-author, with Zahi Hawass, of the book “Giza and the Pyramids, the Definitive History,” which was published last fall. His work has appeared in articles in National Geographic, Smithsonian, Discover, and Archaeology.