Laurent Coulon is an Egyptologist specializing in ancient Egyptian religion, particularly the cult of Osiris. His research also focuses on Egyptian eloquence and rhetoric, and more generally on the context of courtly society in which they were deployed.
A former student at the École normale supérieure and holder of the agrégation in Classics, in 1998 he defended a thesis entitled " Le discours en Égypte ancienne. Éloquence et rhétorique dans les textes de l'Ancien au Nouvel Empire " (dir. N. Grimal, univ. Paris-IV). After a spell at the Institut français d'archéologie orientale (Ifao) as a scientific member between 1998 and 2002, Laurent Coulon was appointed lecturer at the Université de Lyon 2 (2002-2008) and seconded to the Ifao as publications assistant in 2004. In 2008, he was recruited as a CNRS researcher in the Lyon-based HiSoMA team. In 2014, he defended a habilitation to direct research entitled " Les cultes d'Osiris et les évolutions de la religion égyptienne au Ier millénaire av. J.-C. " (guarantor L. Pantalacci, Univ. Lyon 2). In 2015, he was appointed Director of Studies at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in the Religion of Ancient Egypt Chair and Director of the Wladimir Golenischeff Center (EPHE, PSL). He is President of the Société française d'Égyptologie in 2018-2019. In 2019, he was appointed director of the Institut français d'archéologie orientale in Cairo for a four-year term . In 2023, he joins the Collège de France in the chair The Civilization of Pharaonic Egypt.
His research into the development of the Osiris cult in the 1st millennium BC is based on archaeological and epigraphic work at the Osirian chapels and necropolis at Karnak, as well as at other sites (Oxyrhynchos, Ayn Manawir). Usingdigital humanities tools, he is also contributing to the development of online statuary corpora, notably that from the Karnak Cachette, or more recently that encompassing all late sculpture as part of the Late Egyptian Artefact Database project , co-directed with Olivier Perdu.
In 2023, Laurent Coulon was elected Professor at the Collège de France in the chair The Civilization of Pharaonic Egypt.