Dr. Peter J. Brand (PhD University of Toronto, 1998) is an ancient historian and Egyptologist specializing in history and culture of ancient Egypt during its imperial age (ca. 1550-1100 BCE). He is author of The Monuments of Seti I and their Historical Significance: Epigraphic, Historical and Art-Historical Analysis (Brill, 2000), and has written numerous articles on Egyptian kingship, monumental art and construction, history, popular religion, warfare, and diplomacy during the late Eighteenth Dynasty and Ramesside period. Ramesses II, Egypt's Ultimate Pharaoh is his fourth book. Since 2001, Brand has served as director of the Karnak Hypostyle Hall Project, which is recording, conserving, and interpreting hundreds of scenes and hieroglyphic texts carved on the walls and columns of the Great Hypostyle Hall. The project uses cutting-edge technology to model and reveal the inscriptions on this forest of 134 giant columns. Brand has appeared in over twenty documentaries for the History Channel, Discovery, and National Geographic.