News

In the British Museum during scans of the Rosetta Stone. Photo: M. Amin
  • [March 2026] My new book on Cult Practices in Ancient Egyptian Literary Texts has been downloaded almost 3000 times within only half a year!
  • [February 2026] Awards at Digital Humanities Bay Leipzig and the and DHd conference in Vienna! Our projects „VINDA“ (= Visual Interface for Networked Digitized Archives) and our collaborator Marius Behret won poster and poster slam awards. Read more about it and all our contributions (they’re numerous!) here. Marius, who also received a travel stipend, also wrote a blog entry here.
  • [January 2026] In January, I accepted and appointment as Vertrauensdozentin of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS). In this position, I will mentor around 20 students and PhD candidates from all subjects at universities in Leipzig who are the recipients of fellowships. Please get in touch if you’re interested in applying.
  • [January 2026] New Egyptological project: Altägyptische Wörterbücher im Verbund 2.0! The project „Long-term Availability and Integration of Linked Dictionaries of Ancient Egyptian“ (AWV 2.0) digitally modernizes the results of the completed project „Altägyptischen Wörterbücher im Verbund“ (AWV, Linked Dictionaries of Ancient Egyptian), which ran from 2013–2015. The present AWV 2.0 project makes use of present technical standards in archiving the valuable material. By integrating it into the Text+ infrastructure in the framework of the „Nationale Forschungsdateninfrastruktur“ Assosication (NFDI), the results are made available to the academic community as important, interoperable research data. See also my blog post concerning older lexica of Egyptian in the digital Bleek & Lloyd archive at the University of Cape Town here.
  • [December] The DIKUSA project is coming to an end! We organized a big conference, and published the slides. For all of it, please see the new website with links to all resources. Late 2025 and the first three months of 2026 will also see the end of three further projects – and the beginning of several new endeavors.
  • [September 2025] Just published: Naether, Franziska: Kultpraxis in der altägyptischen Literatur, Bd. 1: Kultpraxis in der altägyptischen Literatur: Phänomene und Funktionen, Heidelberg: Propylaeum, 2025, Digital Classics Books, Vol. 7, 1, https://doi.org/10.11588/propylaeum.1074 & Digital Classics Books, Vol. 7, 2, https://doi.org/10.11588/propylaeum.1536 (open access)

    The study brings together for the first time a wide range of Egyptian literary texts in Middle Egyptian, Late Egyptian and Demotic, and examines their representations of cultic practices in relation to ritual manuscripts and broader cultural contexts.

    The monograph consists of two major chapters on the protagonists, instruments, times and spaces and the rituals themselves. Five shorter thematic chapters explore encounters with the divine, representations of fate, sacred justice, religious skepticism, and cultic secrets. Together they offer detailed analyses of around 200 texts – from “Sinuhe” to “Setna” – including genres such as narratives, wisdom texts, and complaints. Drawing on the full-text database Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae (TLA), the work combines close readings of individual passages with distant readings across the corpus. Special attention is given to how Egyptian literary works present those ritual encounters with deities, demons, the dead, oracles, processions and magic, and how these literary depictions compare both to Egyptian ritual texts and with references to contemporary novels in other languages. The conclusion contains, cum grano salis, a ‘checklist for an ideal Egyptian narrative’.

    The books are written with an interdisciplinary audience in mind and address scholars of Egyptology, Classics, Ancient and Near Eastern Studies, theology, history of religions, comparative literature, and related disciplines.

    The publication appears in Propylaeum, the open access information service for Ancient Studies operated by Heidelberg University Library and the Bavarian State Library with funding from the German Research Foundation (DFG). Propylaeum provides a long-term, freely accessible publishing environment. Anyone can download the volumes at no cost, search through their fine-grained tables of contents, and make use of copy-and-paste functionality to translate or further process the texts.

    The research was supported by the Volkswagen Foundation, the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, the European Union, and the Department of Ancient Studies at Stellenbosch University. The publication itself was made possible by a grant from the association Digital Humanities in German-speaking countries (DHd).

    Looking ahead, the project continues: a research dataset derived from the work is currently in preparation and will be released in 2026, providing scholars with additional tools to explore Egyptian literature and cultic practices in new ways.
  • [April 2024] April 15 will bring a public presentation of the DIKUSA project at the SLUB in Dresden. Looking forward to share the research – and afterwards, we will discuss further research potentials in an internal setting. A full day of research ahead!
  • [March 2024] My TED talk is live! Very proud of this and the team effort, since the director Tim Rauch won an Emmy with Barack and Michelle Obama for „We The People“ on Netflix. See the video here on Ted-Ed’s youtube channel and the lesson here. There has been quite some media coverage, see a selection on the Outreach section here.
  • [March 2024] Once more, I will teach in South Africa (Stellenbosch University) and give talks and go with the students on excursion to Iziko Museums. Also very happy to attend my first non-German graduation ceremony!
  • [January 2024] This month brings the kick-off of a blog series on the DIKUSA project. Here is the link of my own contribution, six more are to follow in February until early April.
  • [December 2023] I was very honored to be part of a German delegation of the Saxon Academy of Science and Humanites in Prague – we agreed on further projects and conferences.
  • [November 2023] The annual SBL/AAR meeting in San Antonio was kind of a knightly accolade for me – a celebration of my dissertation about the Sortes Astrampsychi more than a decade ago – and current research. I was able to contribute my new editions of two Greek papyri and an overview of current research.
  • [November 2023] I’m happy to announce that I’m a member of the newly found DFG research network Wort – Wirkung – Wunder: Sprache und Macht in der Vormoderne zwischen Religion, Magie und Medizin/ Working Wonders with Words – bringing in my expertise about magic at the intersection with divination and in creating digital exhibitions as a way of securing knowledge transfer of the meeting of the experts
  • [October 2023] I have been appointed a member of the Beirat of SAVE – Sicherung des audiovisuellen Erbes in Sachsen at SLUB Dresden.
  • [September 2023] Prime time for me – my Historikertag, and with a panel on Wismut and Digital Humanities. In February 2024, a report is published here: Franziska Naether / Silvio Dittrich, Tagungsbericht: HT 2023: Fragile Fakten verfügbar machen: Die „Wismut“ – multidisziplinäre Forschung über den Uranbergbau und dessen Folgen (1947–2020), In: H-Soz-Kult, 10.02.2024, <www.hsozkult.de/conferencereport/id/fdkn-141668>.
  • [August 2023] After I had 8(!) different publishers/series interested in publishing my habilitation thesis, work continued turning it into a book. In 2023, I’ve checked new literature (e.g. at the Americal School of Classical Studies in Athens, ASCSA) and worked on the suggestions of the numerous comments of the reviewers.
  • [April 2023] I have been appointed as fellow of the Minerva Center for the Relations between Israel and Aram in Biblical Times
  • [April 2023] New DH project funded for three years – on dance in the GDR, trying out a couple of new methods, together with Leipzig University, Press release
  • [March 2023]: Teaching and Research in Stellenbosch – trying a couple of new tools in 3D modelling
  • [Jan 2023]: A small DH project on church history in the GDR creating a new knowledge base received funding!
  • [March/April 2022]: It’s good to be back for teaching and research in Stellenbosch – with a field trip to Pretoria/Tshwane!
  • [Jan 2022]: The PUDEL project was approved – more funding, 2 new colleagues!
  • [Dec 2021]: The DIKUSA Project received funding – 1,4 Mio EUR, around 30 new colleagues!
  • [Oct. 2021]: Very happy to announce that my postion has been made permanent – I’m tenured at the Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities!
  • [April 28, 2021]

Einladung/Invitation

Ich lade herzlich zu meiner Antrittsvorlesung im Rahmen des Habilitationsvorhabens ein! Das ist der krönende Abschluss eines langen Karriereschritts.

Der öffentliche, allgemein verständliche Vortrag „Spiel am Nil: Senet, Würfel & Co.“ findet am Mittwoch, den 28. April 15:00-16:30 Uhr in Zoom statt. Es geht um antike Spiele bis hin zum modernen Gaming.

I cordially invite you to the final step in my Habilitation process –
the „Antrittsvorlesung“. It is an exam and a public lecture (in German).
It will be about Egyptian board games („Spiel am Nil: Senet, Würfel &
Co.“).

Date: Wednesday, April 28, 2021
Time: 15-16:30 or 3 pm GMZ-2 (which is e.g. at 9 am Eastern time; check your time zone here:
https://time.is/GMT+2)

Bitte PM für den Link/Please PM me for the link.

Leider gibt’s danach keine Drinks und Buffet, aber ich empfehle, ein Getränk nach Wahl bereit zu stellen.

There won’t be any catering or drinks for the locals afterwards because of the pandemic, but this way, people from anywhere in the world could join. I encourage to have the beverage of your choice next to your
computer. 

  • [July 2020] My colleagues and I wrote a blog post on tools for video conferencing. We are clearly fans of open source tools. You can read the review here (in German). We also updated a list on digital tools [Nov. 2020], dubbed „Working in times of Corona„.