Mertz, Barbara

The American author and Egyptologist Barbara Mertz was born as Barbara Gross in the little town of Canton in Illinois. Both her parents were interested in literature, and encouraged their children to read. After a few years, the family moved to Chicago, and she studied at Oak Park Township High School. A relative who was a teacher got her interested in history partly through repeated visits to museums. So Metz started to study Egyptology at the University of Chicago, where she graduated with a B.A. in 1947, an M.A. in 1950 and finally a Ph.D. in the same subject in 1952.