Erik Hornung (28 January 1933 – 11 July 2022)[1] was a Latvian-born German Egyptologist and one of the most influential modern writers on ancient Egyptian religion.
[2] Hornung was born in Riga, Latvia in 1933 and gained his PhD at the University of Tübingen in 1956.
His main research field has been funerary literature, the Valley of the Kings in particular.
[3] His book Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt, The One and the Many has become his best-known work, in which he concludes, whilst acknowledging previous work by Henri Frankfort and his "multiplicity of approaches" and John A. Wilson's "complementary" treatment of Egyptian modes of thought, that "Anyone who takes history seriously will not accept a single method as definitive; the same should be true of anyone who takes belief seriously".
[4] Hornung became Vice-President of the Society of the Friends of the Royal Tombs of Egypt in 1988.