Colleen Darnell (/dɑːrˈnɛl/; born Colleen Marie Manassa; born July 26, 1980)[1][2][3] is an American Egyptologist, whose expertise includes Late Period uses of the Underworld Books, ancient Egyptian military history, the literature of New Kingdom Egypt, and Egyptian revival history.
[8] In January 2013, a scandal broke that Colleen Manassa and fellow professor John Darnell had been carrying out a long-running affair.
[citation needed] She now teaches Art History at Naugatuck Valley Community College in Waterbury, Connecticut.
In 2008, Darnell created the Moalla Survey Project, an archaeological survey expedition in Egypt (under the auspices of the Egyptian Ministry of State for Antiquities) that has discovered several important new sites on the east bank of the Nile approximately 45 km south of Luxor, ranging in date from the late Predynastic period through the late Roman period.
[16] In 2010, Darnell presented the first identification of Nubian (Pan Grave) pottery manufactured at the site of Umm Mawagir in Kharga Oasis.
With few Egyptian workers appearing in the pictures, the account was critiqued by fellow Egyptologists for being "scholars who know these problematic histories choose to engage in the aesthetics of colonialism.