Cogut Institute for the Humanities

Eric Gottlieb

2024-25 Undergraduate Fellow, concentrating in History, Egyptology, and Applied Math
Project “Egyptian Christianization from the Manichaean Perspective: Evidence from Medinet Madi, 300–599 CE”
Last updated June 20, 2024

Biography

Eric Gottlieb ’25 is an undergraduate concentrating in history, Egyptology, and applied mathematics. Broadly speaking, he is interested in ancient religious transformation. His thesis, entitled “Egyptian Christianization from the Manichaean Perspective: Evidence from Medinet Madi, 300–599 CE,” attempts to excavate lived experience by reading for the “hidden transcript” embedded in Medinet Madi’s extant textual record. Joining a growing corpus of archaeological and exegetical scholarship on the “quotidian turn,” his thesis draws from an array of postcolonial, sociological, and post-structural theory, in order to understand what it meant to be a “Manichaean” in Medinet Madi. Ultimately, the project hopes to complicate the prevailing theory of Late Antique Egyptian Christianization by introducing new Manichaean evidence from Medinet Madi, and new “bottom up” methods of approaching that evidence. Gottlieb’s other academic interests include Coptic philology, Middle Egyptian epigraphy, and apocryphal exegesis. Outside of school, he is involved in fair housing advocacy and policy analysis.