Seminar für Ägyptologie und Koptologie

Welcome …

… to the webpages of the Seminar for Egyptology and Coptic Studies, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen.

Since 1867 Göttingen has had a tradition of studying and researching the history, culture, and religion of Pharaonic and Christian Egypt and the Egyptian-Coptic language. Today's students can obtain a B.A. in "Egyptology and Coptic Studies" or a B.A. in "Ancient Cultures". An M.A. or PhD degree can be pursued in both Egyptology and Coptic Studies. We welcome guests and students from other areas to our courses.

You are invited to visit or contact us: our institute is located on the 2nd floor of the Centre for Cultural Studies, Heinrich-Düker-Weg 14. You will find a list of telephone numbers and electronic addresses on our "staff" page.

International Association for Coptic Studies (IACS)
13th International Congress of Coptic Studies

The 13^th International Congress of Coptic Studies will be organised jointly by the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Lower Saxony (Digital Edition of the Coptic Old Testament) and the University of Göttingen (Institute for Egyptology and Coptic Studies), under the patronage of and in close cooperation with the International Association for Coptic Studies (IACS). The congress will take place from Monday, 27 July to Saturday, 1 August 2026. Further information about the congress, including accommodation, programme and events, will be available on the following website: https://iccs13.com. All questions or requests concerning the congress should be directed to the Congress Secretary at the email address: coptic-congress-2026@uni-goettingen.de.

New publication on the history of Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies under National Socialism

A new volume of the Göttinger Orientforschungen, Series IV: Egypt sheds light on the history of Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies in the "Third Reich", which has many parallels. Edited by representatives of the two disciplines in Göttingen, it is based on a digital workshop held in November 2021. Contributions on various aspects of intellectual history, history of scholarship and prosopography, ranging from an interdisciplinary analysis of the Nazi propaganda film "Germanen gegen Pharaonen" to a history of Sumerology in Japan in the 1930s, open up new or little-noticed sources, shed light on the relationship between Jewish scholars and their non-Jewish students or trace the history of important institutions, organisations or publishers during the Nazi era and its aftermath.

Current research on the Amduat specimens from the tomb of Thutmosis I (KV 38)

Under the direction of Dr Khaled Abdel Ghany, the project "Investigations of the religious history of the early 18th Dynasty: Documentation and Conservation of the Amduat Specimens from the Tomb of Thutmosis I (KV 38)", funded by the American Research Center in Egypt, is generating exciting results on the oldest known versions of the royal Netherworld Books of the New Kingdom. This project page provides an introduction to the ongoing work in the Valley of the Kings, Luxor and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Göttinger Miszellen 268 (2022), 269 (2023) and 270/271 (2023) available!

The third issue of the year 2022 publishes multifaceted, current contributions by international authors to the Egyptological discussion. Also available are the issues year 2023, that are being delivered

PONS - Geistes- und Kulturwissenschaften - A "bridge" for the student exchange between the german departments of Egyptology and Coptic Studies

Since 2016 students of Egyptology and Coptic Studies have the opportunity to study at one of our German partner universities for one or two semesters via the PONS-program, which is comparable to a national Erasmus. It is the successor to "PONS-Archaeology", which was geared solely towards students of Classical Archaeology.