Margaret Geoga’s research combines Egyptology and literary studies to focus on ancient Egyptian literature, its interpretation by ancient and modern readers alike, and the reception history of ancient Egypt in later periods. Her other research interests include scribal culture, Middle and Late Egyptian, manuscript studies, book history, history of Egyptology, translation studies, and literary theory.
Maggie’s first book focuses on The Teaching of Amenemhat, an enigmatic and unusually popular ancient Egyptian poem that unusually depicts the murder of a king. The monograph investigates the poem’s transmission and reception by its numerous ancient readers, closely examining a selection of the poem’s approximately 250 surviving manuscripts in order to explore how readers interpreted and reinterpreted this text over the course of 1000 years in both Egypt and Nubia. Some of Maggie’s other projects include one on theories of ancient Egyptian literature—exploring new combinations of ancient texts and modern theories, as well as ways of reading ancient Egyptian literature as theoretical itself—and a long-term project on Jean Terrasson’s 1731 novel Séthos, whose depiction of ancient Egyptian knowledge and mysteries strongly influenced numerous eighteenth-century thinkers and still underpins popular beliefs about ancient Egypt today.
Maggie earned her PhD in Egyptology from Brown University, where she also completed a concurrent MA in Comparative Literature. Her work has been supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, and the McKeon Center. Maggie has previously been an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities at the Wolf Humanities Center of the University of Pennsylvania, a Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography, and the Terrace Research Associate in Egyptian Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. In addition to the University of Chicago, she has also taught at Brown University and Providence College. Maggie’s teaching includes courses on ancient Egyptian language and texts, ancient Egyptian literature, ancient history and culture, and the reception of ancient Egypt in later periods.