Faculty

The scholars leading research and teaching on the ancient world.

Margaret Geoga

Assistant Professor of Egyptology

Research Interests

Ancient Egyptian Literature; Reception Studies; Scribal Culture; Middle Egyptian; Late Egyptian; Manuscript Studies; Book History; History of Egyptology; Translation Studies; Literary Theory

Maggie Geoga headshot

About

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. 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 reaching 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.

Education

PhD Egyptology Brown Univeristy
2020
MA Comparative Literature Brown University
2018
BA Romance Languages and Literatures Harvard University
2012

ISAC Publications

Select Publications

Books

  • Margaret Geoga. Receptions of a Middle Egyptian Poem: A Textual and Material Study of The Teaching of Amenemhat, ca. 1550–500 BCE. Under review.

Edited Volumes 

  • Margaret Geoga, Aurore Motte, and Judith Jurjens (eds.). Looking Beyond the Text: New Approaches to Scribal Culture and Practices in Ancient Egypt. Harvard Egyptological Studies 27. Leiden: Brill, 2025. 
  • Margaret Geoga and John Steele (eds.). The Allure of the Ancient: Receptions of the Ancient Middle East, ca. 1600–1800. Intersections: Interdisciplinary Studies in Early Modern Culture 80. Leiden: Brill, 2022. 

Articles

  • Margaret Geoga. "Manuscripts of The Teaching of Amenemhat in the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures (Chicago)." Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt (forthcoming). 
  • Margaret Geoga. "Between Literature and History: Receptions of Poetry in Ancient Egypt." Middle Eastern Literatures 25, no. 2–3 (2022): 69–96. 
  • Margaret Geoga. "The Teaching of Amenemhat at the Temple of Kawa." In In the House of Heqanakht: Text and Context in Ancient Egypt. Studies in Honor of James P. Allen, edited by M. Victoria Almansa-Villatoro, Silvia Štubňová Nigrelli, and Mark Lehner, pp. 265–77. Harvard Egyptological Studies. Leiden: Brill, 2022. 
  • Margaret Geoga. "Ancient and Modern: Citational Practices and the Status of Ancient Egypt in Jean Terrasson’s Séthos." In The Allure of the Ancient: Receptions of the Ancient Middle East, ca. 1600–1800, edited by Margaret Geoga and John Steele, pp. 185–229. Intersections: Interdisciplinary Studies in Early Modern Culture 80. Leiden: Brill, 2022.
  • Margaret Geoga. "New Insights into Papyrus Millingen and the Reception History of The Teaching of Amenemhat." Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 107 (2021): 225–38. 
  • Margaret Geoga. "The Advent of the Book of Gates: Tomb Decoration and Theological Change in KV 57." Studien zur Altägyptischen Kultur 47 (2018): 43–56.