User:Leonard H. Lesko/sandbox

Barbara Switalski Lesko, born in Chicago on October 8, 1940, retired from Brown University’s Department of Egyptology in 2005 where she had been, since 1983, the Administrative Research Assistant to her husband,  Leonard H. Lesko, Wilbour Chair Professor of Egyptology and Chairman of the Department of Egyptology. Previously, Leonard had been Professor of Egyptology at the University of California, Berkeley and there Barbara had headed up a team of graduate students creating the data base for Leonard’s NEH supported Dictionary of Late Egyptian (using the first computer-generated hieroglyphs). During her 15 years at Berkeley Barbara taught for the adult education program and began accompanying tours to Egypt. Such activity continued when the couple moved to Providence, Rhode Island after Leonard assumed the Wilbour Chair Professorship in Egyptology and Chairmanship of the Department of Egyptology.

Barbara’s Egyptological studies began in her teen years and, in the mid 1950’s, led her to urge her local U.S. Congressman, Barrett O’Hara, to help save the magnificent rock-cut temple of Abu Simbel slated to disappear below the waters of the new Lake Nasser created by the High Dam at Aswan. Fortunately Rep. O’Hara was Chair of the House of Representative’s Appropriations Committee and he led a delegation from his committee to Egypt, flying over the Nile-side temples, resulting in the release of generous funds to save the temples. Barbara would go on to study at the University of Chicago, earning her BA and MA from the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Literature where she met her future husband The Leskos married in 1966 after Leonard was hired to teach in the Department of Near Eastern Languages at Berkeley. The 1970’s saw the block-buster exhibition of the treasures of Tutankhamun, and both Leskos were called upon to lecture at many schools and organizations in California where the exhibit opened in both San Francisco and Los Angeles. Coincidentally, Barbara wrote and privately published by Leonard’s B.C. Scribe Publications her first book: The Remarkable Women of ancient Egypt, which was sold widely

Once at Brown, work continued on the Late Egyptian Dictionary, and Barbara, after contributing a chapter on women in the ancient Near East for the college textbook Becoming Visible, realized that not enough research had been done on women and their roles in those ancient societies. This prompted her to apply for grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Mellon Foundation to support an international conference in 1987 that brought together 30 scholars for papers and discussions, and resulted in the book Women’s Earliest Records, published by Scholar’s Press in 1989, and later, selected by the American Council of Learned Societies for world-wide circulation on the internet.

Ten years later, in 1999, the University of Oklahoma Press published her next book The Great Goddesses of Egypt. The Dictionary had also appeared in a second expanded edition with Barbara named as collaborating editor. The years at Brown were enhanced by the Lesko’s buying, in 1983, a waterfront and historic property, which included a lighthouse on Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay. Leonard did restoration work on the tower, and recognition for the light and keeper’s cottage was officially given by the U.S. Government’s National Register of Historic Properties a few years later. After retirement, Barbara wrote the book Lighthouse Life, published by Outskirts Press of Denver In 2009, about their experiences there and the history of early lighthouses in New England. The new century also saw purchase of land in Hancock County, Maine and the building of a house for summer pleasure on Frenchman’s Bay as well as a winter home in Gold Canyon Arizona.