Acknowledgment
The material in this obituary is derived in part from an autobiographical text which Rafi Ventura wrote and which was used for a speech by the author on an afternoon of lectures in his honour on December 9 th , 2010, and based in part on an announcement of his death by the author which was distributed on the Egypt Electronic Forum on September 20 th 2020 and the Agade list onSeptember 21 st 2020. Many thanks to Arlette David, Rachel Reiss and Yael Sharabi Ventura for checking the content of this material.
The photograph shows Dr. Ventura guiding at the Step Pyramid at Saqqara copyright © Arlette David. It is published here by kind permission of Rachel Reiss and Yael Sharabi Ventura.