PhD Students & Early Career Scholars:

Sofie Schiødt (Co-Director, SciPap)

Sofie Schiødt is a postdoctoral researcher at Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, generously funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. She obtained her PhD in 2021 from the University of Copenhagen with the dissertation Medical Science in Ancient Egypt: A Translation and Interpretation of Papyrus Louvre-Carlsberg (pLouvre E 32847 + pCarlsberg 917). The dissertation presented a preliminary text edition of a 6-meter-long papyrus – the second-longest medical text surviving from Egypt – which she is currently finalizing for publication. The papyrus provides entirely new insights into Egyptian medical science, containing unique treatises on skin lesions, herbal medicine, and embalming. Schiødt’s main research interests lie in ancient Egyptian medicine and magic, science and technology, and social history. Her background lies primarily in philology, but she also has considerable archaeological and osteological training through her work at the Department of Forensic Medicine at the University of Copenhagen (2013-2015) and her participation in excavations including the Amarna cemeteries (2015-today), the Amara West cemeteries (2014-2016), and el-Kurru (2017).

Amber Jacob (Co-Director, SciPap)

Amber Jacob is a PhD student at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University. Her main research interests lie in the history of science and medicine and the cross-cultural encounters between ancient Egyptian and Greek intellectual traditions in the Graeco-Roman Period (c. 300BCE-300CE). For her doctoral dissertation at ISAW, she is working on the edition of an extensive but fragmentary corpus of Demotic medical texts in the Papyrus Carlsberg Collection. These date from the 1^st-2^nd centuries CE and derive from a temple library excavated at the ancient site of Tebtunis in the Fayum. From the same site are preserved some 14 or so Greek medical papyri. Amber’s work will address questions of the level of cross-cultural interaction between ancient Egyptian and Greek medical knowledge systems in Graeco-Roman antiquity, as represented in the Tebtunis material. The shared social and historical context of the assemblage of Egyptian and Greek medical texts from Tebtunis offers an unparalleled opportunity to assess the relationship and interaction between the two medical traditions and the practitioners associated with them.
Amber received her MA in Egyptology from the University of Copenhagen, specializing in papyrology, late Egyptian language (particularly Demotic), and critical analysis of textual traditions. She has also trained in papyrus conservation in the Papyrus Carlsberg Collection. She received her BA in Classical, Near Eastern, and Religious Studies from the University of British Columbia.

Ida Christensen

Ida Adsbøl Christensen (born 1995) received her MA degree in Egyptology from the University of Copenhagen/Leiden University in the summer 2019. Her primary research interest is ancient Egyptian scientific literature and her current project is on Egyptian astrological theory and practice in the Graeco-Roman period (c. 300 BCE – 300 CE). Her doctoral project aims to include the edition and discussion of three unpublished demotic astrological manuscripts from the Papyrus Carlsberg Collection at the University of Copenhagen. For her MA dissertation, Ida edited parts of one of these papyri, a manual on astrology, which concerns the future of men and is valuable for the understanding of astrological phenomena in ancient Egypt. The manuscript dates from the 1^st – 2^nd century CE and originates from the well-known temple library discovered in situ in the main temple at Tebtunis, an ancient town in the southernmost part of the Fayum. During her studies, Ida’s main focus has been Egyptian philology, papyrology, and, in particular, cursive scripts such as hieratic, abnormal hieratic, and demotic. She has previously worked on ancient Egyptian literary texts and is also trained in Classical Greek and the history of Greek and Roman art and architecture.

Anne Grons, M.A.

Anne Grons (born 1992) studied Classical and Early Christian Archaeology, Near Eastern Studies, Egyptology and Coptology at the University of Münster from 2010 to 2015. During that time, she worked as a student assistant at the Institute of Egyptology and Coptology (IAEK) Münster, being responsible for the Egyptological library and giving tutorials in Coptic, supplementing the lectures of Prof. Dr. Stephen Emmel. From 2016 to 2020 she was a research assistant/lexicographer at the project Dictionary and Database of Greek Loanwords in Coptic, led by Prof. Dr. Tonio Sebastian Richter (Freie Universität Berlin). Since 2021 Anne Grons has been a member of the research staff of Prof. Dr. Tanja Pommerening at the Institute of the History of Pharmacy (Philipps Universität Marburg). From summer 2016 she has been writing her doctoral thesis on Coptic pharmacological texts. The work includes a complete (re-)edition and reassessment of all currently known pharmacological texts in Coptic from the early fourth century up to the eleventh century CE, including the Coptic herbal in the Papyrus Carlsberg Collection. Next to her interests in Coptic pharmacology, the culture of late antique and early Islamic Egypt, and the varieties of Ancient Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek and Arabic medicine and pharmacology, she is deeply interested in the lexicography of Greek and Arabic loanwords in Coptic.

Lingxin Zhang

Lingxin Zhang earned her doctoral degree in Egyptology from Johns Hopkins University and is currently a Provost’s Distinguished Faculty Fellow at Georgetown University. Her research interest lies in early sciences, divination, and gender in Graeco-Roman Egypt. For her dissertation, she edited and translated two astrological papyri written for women (PSI inv. D 35 + P. Carlsberg 684 and P. Carlsberg 100), which are from Roman Tebtunis. Though specializing in philology, Zhang complements her studies with interdisciplinary discussions, such as those pertaining to the critical gender and race theories. Zhang is a member of multiple excavations, including the Mut Temple Expedition and the Egyptian-Chinese archaeological mission at the Temple of Montu, Karnak.

Supervisory Committee