Leo
Depuydt was born on March 4, 1957 in Diksmuide, which is a province of West
Flanders, Belgium. He grew up in the small town of Merkem and attended high
school at Saint Vincent’s Gymnasium in Ieper. He went on to educate
himself at numerous universities throughout Europe and the U.S. From 1979 to
1981, he wrote a thesis on the Middle Egyptian verbal system at the Catholic
University of Louvain in Belgium. In describing his motivation to become an
Egyptologist, Leo said, “I studied much Latin and Greek as a boy from
the age of twelve and then concentrated on classics in college. Now, Egypt is
not all that far from the classical world. Many Greeks emigrated to Egypt.
Alexander, the Macedonian, conquered Egypt, and installed a dynasty of Greek
kings, the Ptolemies. Egypt then became part of the Roman Empire in 30 BC.
So, it was a small shift from Classics to Egyptology. It seems as if I have
always been engaged in ancient studies. I have always been curious about all
kinds of things and have always been interested in being a scholar and doing
research and finding and seeing things that no one has seen before”.
From
October of 1982 to June of 1983, he did one of his post-graduate studies at
the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. He studied with H.J. Polotsky,
which he said was one of the many defining moments of his career. Leo had
read Polotsky’s book, Etudes de syntaxe copte, and knew
instinctively, even if he didn’t understand it quite fully at that
time, that it was something very different.
Then
in September of 1983, he was took an eight-month hiatus from his studies due
to military service. He was a non-commissioned officer and tank commander
stationed in Spich, near Cologne, West Germany. He did find time though, in
the evenings and on the weekends to do some work. He even managed to write an
article on Coptic while stationed there. He also found pleasure in playing
the trumpet at the morning ceremonies and described the military experience,
on the whole, as being one of those things that one must go through to know
what it is like.
After
the service, he continued his education at a number of different colleges,
including the University of Tübingen in Germany, Yale, and Brown University.
Leo has learned over fifteen different languages (though he is more fluent in
some than others), including German, French, ancient Greek, Coptic, and
biblical and modern Hebrew. He is and has been in a wide range of
organizations since 1984, like: the American Oriental Society, the
International Association of Egyptology, and the Deutsche Morgenländische
Gesellschaft. Leo has written many books, articles, and reviews on Coptic
studies of which he has a vast understanding and knowledge. Along with his
publications, he has contributed and lectured at an almost infinite amount of
conferences all over the world.
He
is now the Associate Professor of Egyptology (with tenure) at Brown
University in Rhode Island and was the visiting Associate Professor (for
lecturing on Egyptian calendars and chronology) at Yale University for the
Spring of 2003.