Cogut Institute for the Humanities

Christelle Alvarez is Assistant Professor of Egyptology. Her research focuses on ancient Egyptian philology, epigraphy, ritual beliefs and practices, and the socio-historical context of the third millennium BCE. While in residence at the Cogut Institute, she will complete her book, “Inscribing the Pyramid of King Qakare Ibi: Knowledge Transfer and Scribal Practice in Late Old Kingdom Egypt (c. 2350–2150 BCE).” This project investigates the dynamics of knowledge transmission, scribal tradition, and social change during a time of political and environmental upheaval, using Egypt’s last known inscribed pyramid as a central case study. She will also begin developing her second major project, which explores the construction and circulation of knowledge in relation to societal transformation in third-millennium BCE Egypt. A member of the Mission archéologique franco-suisse de Saqqâra (MafS) since 2011, she leads fieldwork at the pyramid of King Qakare Ibi (Eighth Dynasty, ca. 2150–2134 BCE) in South Saqqara. Before coming to Brown, she worked with the Collaborative Research Centre “Episteme in motion. Transfer of Knowledge from the Ancient World to the Early Modern Period” at the Freie Universität Berlin, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). She is also a member of the Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures at the University of Oxford.