Jean Winand studied classical humanities (Latin-Greek, as it was called at the time). Entering the university in 1979 he simultaneously studied for a degree in classical philology and a degree in Oriental languages and literatures. He graduated in classical philology in 1983 and in Oriental languages in the following year. These studies revealed a taste for Antiquity, But what had interested him since childhood was ‘exotic’ writing. ‘When I saw Chinese or hieroglyphs I got passionate. When I was around 14 or 15 I laid my hands on a treatise on reading hieroglyphic writing, to see how it worked.’

After his degrees he chose a doctorate in Egyptology. Entering the FNRS in 1986 he defended his thesis on the verbal morphology of neo-Egyptian at the ULg in 1989. ‘I remember it well, the 22nd of December, the day the Ceausescu couple were shot!’ But they were lean years for the university and he had to leave the university for over a year. ‘I worked for a numismatist in Brussels, the Elsen company, in the Ancient, Greek and Roman numismatics department. I didn’t know much to start with, I learned. I had to value, carry out an inventory of and describe the coins offered for sale.’

Jean Winand came back to the University of Liège thanks to a half–post as a library assistant in the Oriental languages section! Already a winner of the Royal Academy annual prize in 1986, he gained the Friends of the ULg Prize for his thesis, which had been published in 1992 and the Friends five yearly Prize in 1998. He applied to the FNRS, this time as a qualified researcher, in 1993.

He pursued his research in the domain of language, but also on the ground in Egypt. He worked at first at the temple of Arnak on the publication of epigraphic texts and then picked up the concession of the temple interior’s surrounding wall: an ‘object’ of study which was 400 metres long and, originally, a little less than 10 metres high! In 2002 Jean Winand passed his higher education training thesis. He then became an FRNS master researcher. When professor Malaise retired in 2004, Jean Winand succeeded him, first of all as a lecturer in 2005 and then as an ordinary professor in 2007. He is now President of the ULG Department of Antiquity Sciences, president of the CIPL, a member of the academic committee and area editor in the ‘language’ domain for the UCLA Encyclopaedia of Egyptology, an online Ancient Egypt encyclopaedia since driven by the University of Los Angeles and the University of Oxford. Jean Winand is also the Belgian representative of the International Egyptologist Association; he sits on the FWO Taal en Letterkunde academic committee and on the FNRS scientific commission. He is a member of the Queen Elizabeth Egyptology Foundation’s administrative council.

Selection of recent publications

J. WINAND, « Déjà », « aussi », « toujours » et « encore » … an en néo-égyptien, dans P. Grandet, Chr. Gallois, L. Pantalacci (éd.), Mélanges offerts à François Neveu, Le Caire, 2008, p. 289-303 (= BdE 145).

J. WINAND, Les formes nominalisées en égyptien ancien, dans Faits de langues 30, 2007, p. 69-82.

J. WINAND, Encore Ounamon 2,27-28, in LingAeg. 15, 2007, p. 299-306.

J. WINAND, La question de l’Être en Égypte ancienne, dans J. Denooz, V. Dortu, R. Steinmetz (éd.), Mosaïque. Mélanges en l’honneur de Pierre Somville, Liège, 2007, p. 295-304.

J. WINAND, Temps et aspect en ancien égyptien. Une approche sémantique, Brill, Boston-Leyde, 2006 (= Probleme der Ägyptologie, 25).

J. WINAND, A Semantic Approach to the Egyptian Language : the Case of Time and Aspect. Towards a New Paradigm, dans LingAeg. 14, 2006, p. 451-472 (= Actes du Colloque « After Polotsky », Bonn, octobre 2005).

M. MALAISE & J. WINAND, Grammaire raisonnée de l'égyptien classique, Liège, 1999, VII + 866 p. (= Aegyptiaca Leodiensia, 6).