Barry pursued a diverse fieldwork programme, investigating Amarna’s temples, palaces, houses, workshops, cemeteries and post-New Kingdom remains, and embracing experimental and environmental archaeology. His publications placed the site in dialogue with world archaeology, from early papers on Amarna’s urban character, thematic articles in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal, to the seminal volume Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization. He was driven to understand how ancient Egyptian society worked, whether starting from a broken faience tile or Akhenaten’s vision inscribed in stone, always seeking out the bigger picture and stressing the importance of archaeological evidence. He made archaeological research feel relevant and urgent.
With the help of caretaker Mohamed Omar, he rebuilt the southern expedition house first used by the German and British teams at Amarna in the early 20th century. The house became home for a community of researchers and staff that now reaches across generations. His care for the site extended to the reconstruction projects he led in collaboration with the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities at the North Palace, Small Aten Temple, and most recently, the Great Aten Temple. These have transformed Amarna into a site that can be experienced both through its beautifully decorated rock-cut tombs, and the monumental buildings preserved on the desert plain below.
Barry brought to Egyptology a perspective as unique as the site to which he dedicated his life. His landmark volume, The City of Akhenaten and Nefertiti: Amarna and its People, written with the knowledge that Amarna still has so much to give, is invaluable both as an archaeological biography of a lived Bronze Age city and in the new research directions it teases. His legacy in Middle Egypt is one of deep admiration, borne out of the enormous intellectual contributions he made to the archaeology and heritage of Egypt and the calm, kind and respectful manner he treated those around him.
We carry forward work on Amarna in honour of his memory.
