Looking Beyond the Text - (Harvard Egyptological Studies) (Hardcover)

About the Book

This edited collection goes beyond the traditional boundaries of Egyptology to approach the study of ancient Egyptian scribal practices and their impact on scribal culture in new and innovative ways, examining varied media, textual and artistic genres, and time periods.

Book Synopsis

Looking beyond the Text investigates the production, transmission, and reception of texts and manuscripts in ancient Egypt, focusing on the complex practices and culture of the scribes who made them. Drawing on theories and methods from other disciplines such as literary studies, neuroscience, and book history, the authors discuss the physical practices of writing, social contexts of texts and manuscripts, and scribes themselves. The papers examine a wide range of manuscripts, including letters, medical compendia, poems, religious corpora, and other text genres, written on varied media in different time periods. The resulting collection offers new perspectives on the key role of scribes in ancient Egypt and models more contextualized and materially informed modes of philology.

About the Author

Margaret Geoga, Ph.D. (2020), Brown University, is Assistant Professor of Egyptology at the University of Chicago. Her research focuses on ancient Egyptian literature, scribal culture, textual transmission, and reception, both in ancient Egypt itself and in later periods.

Aurore Motte, Ph.D. (2018), University of Liège, is a postdoctoral researcher of the National Fund for Scientific Research (Belgium). She has published on ancient Egyptian language, literature, and paratext. She is currently focusing on the Book of Kemyt.

Judith Jurjens, Ph.D. (2024), recently defended her dissertation at Leiden University. Her work focuses on the ancient Egyptian wisdom instruction The Teaching of Khety and its educational context. She has published several articles on the subject..