Åke Engsheden
Contact
Name and title: Åke Engsheden
Workplace: Department of Archaeology and Classical Studies Länk till annan webbplats.
Visiting address Wallenberglaboratoriet, Lilla Frescativägen 7
Postal address Institutionen för arkeologi och antikens kultur106 91 Stockholm
About me
I am a reader in Egyptology and leading Swedish expert on ancient Egyptian in all its varieties. A diachronic perspective was important for me already when writing my thesis on the verbal system in the high-status variety of ancient Egyptian in late pharaonic Egypt, as it has been also later in my research on Egyptian toponymy. I have taught Egyptology both in Sweden and abroad (Finland, China and Germany). Since 2016 I have been teaching much-appreciated courses related to ancient Egypt here at Stockholm University.
As a researcher I focus on texts and grammar in ancient Egyptian and Coptic. In my thesis “La reconstitution du verbe en égyptien de tradition 400-30 av. J.-C.” (published in 2003) I analysed the high-status variety of ancient Egyptian which had been neglected in older research. In later years I have published several works on Egyptian toponymy, including a modern regional study which is based on field research in the Nile delta. My last monograph is an index of toponyms that are mentioned in Coptic documentary texts from Late Antiquity. I have also been the PI of an infrastructural project sponsored by Riksbankens jubileumsfond (Bank of Sweden) regarding Coptic ostraca (inscribed limestone or pottery sherds) found in Swedish public collections. These texts provide information regarding life, mainly in a monastic environment, in the 7th-8th centuries AD in Thebes in Southern Egypt. Next to this, I write for a wide audience, including a catalogue on the occasion of an exhibition on hieroglyphs at Uppsala University Library in 2022-3, and I have participated also in other museum work. I also participate in Thoth, a international project (Liege/Berlin) devoted to the inventory and development of the hieroglyphs.
Key words
Hieroglyphs, Egyptology, Coptic, Late Antiquity, Toponymy
Brief CV
2014-15 Visiting professor in Egyptology at NENU (Changchun, People’s Republic of China)
2011-12 Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter at Johannes Gutenberg-Universität in Mainz
2006-08 Membre à titre étranger at IFAO, Cairo (Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale)
2006-2013 Researcher at Uppsala University
2002 PhD at Uppsala University (Egyptology)
Studies in Uppsala, Copenhagen and Cologne