St John Simpson

St John Simpson is a senior curator and Assistant Keeper in the Department of the Middle East at the British Museum where he is responsible for the collections from ancient Iran, Arabia and Central Asia, with Museum-wide responsibility fo liaison with law enforcement agencies over the identification and repatriation of trafficked antiquities. He has curated three major special exhibitions: Queen of Sheba: Treasures from Ancient Yemen (2002), Afghanistan: Crossroads of the Ancient World (2011), and Scythians: Warriors of Ancient Siberia (2017/18), as well as countless small displays and the permanent Rahim Irvani Gallery for Ancient Iran (2007). His most recent books are Masters of the Steppe: The Impact of the Scythians and Later Nomad Societies of Eurasia (2020), In Context: the Reade Festschrift (2020), Sasanian Archaeology: Settlements, Environment and Material Culture (2022), and ‘To Aleppo gone ...’: Essays in honour of Jonathan N. Tubb (2023), all published with Archaeopress.