About the Faculty

Colleen Manassa
Egyptology
colleen.manassa@yale.edu

(on leave academic year 2011-12)

Colleen Manassa (B.A., Yale 2001, Ph.D. 2005) joined the faculty of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations as the Marilyn M. and William K. Simpson Assistant Professor of Egyptology in 2006, and she was promoted to Associate Professor in 2010. Her research interests include Egyptian grammar, New Kingdom literary texts, military history, funerary religion, and social history.

Her first monograph, The Great Karnak Inscription of Merneptah: Grand Strategy in the 13th Century BC, presented a new translation and commentary of Merneptah’s longest historical inscription. She explored the lexicographic and grammatical complexities of the texts, including its interesting mixture of Middle, Late Middle, and Late Egyptian forms, as well as its historical context, particularly the participation of the Sea Peoples. A use of comparative military history enabled the first reconstruction of the strategic and tactical events of Merneptah’s Year 5 Libyan War.

Colleen Manassa’s latest monograph is a revised and expanded publication of her PhD Thesis, The Late Egyptian Underworld: Sarcophagi and Related Texts from the Nectanebid Period, which presents the reuse of Underworld Books on Thirtieth Dynasty and early Ptolemaic sarcophagi in their Late Period context. The study demonstrates that Late Period priests not only understood the then millennium-old Underworld Books, but continued to edit the texts, and most importantly integrated parts of different books to form new compositions. A joint monograph with John Coleman Darnell entitled Tutankhamun’s Armies: Battle and Conquest in Ancient Egypt’s Eighteenth Dynasty appeared in August, 2007. Tutankhamun’s Armies provides an overview of the historical and religious trends of the Amarna Period, including Amunhotep III’s solar worship and a new explanation of Akhenaten’s own religious “revolution.” One chapter is devoted to military organization and the development of Egyptian weaponry, while three further chapters examine Amarna military strategy towards Nubia, Western Asia, Libya, and domestic police actions. Nubian fortress architecture, the integration of Nubia as Egypt’s sister state in the durbar festival, new interpretations of the Amarna Letters, and Libyans in a painted papyrus from Amarna are among the many topics in these chapters.

Her current projects include a monograph entitled Imagining the Past: Historical Fiction in New Kingdom Egypt, which will provide the first critical edition of several literary texts of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties.  In addition, she is preparing several joint monographs: The Middle Nubian Cemeteries of Toshka, Results of the Pennsylvania-Yale Expedition to  Nubia, 1961 (with Maria Carmela Gatto), An Introduction to Middle Egyptian Grammar (with Cara Sargent) and Inscribed Material from the Quarries of Gebel el-Asr (with John Darnell). Articles in progress also include a publication of a hieratic economic text from the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscripts Library and a diachronic grammatical study of an important particle.

In 2008, Prof. Manassa began the Mo’alla Survey Project (MSP), which is currently in its third field season.  Under her direction, the MSP has surveyed an important northern extension to the Mo’alla necropolis and rediscovered the ancient city of Agny.  She also was the first archaeologist to map a desert road that connected the region south of Mo’alla with other points north and south in the Nile Valley (for more information about the MSP, see http://www.yale.edu/egyptology/ae_moalla.htm). 

Prof. Manassa teaches widely on the history and literature of ancient Egypt, including a joint course with Prof. Beatrice Gruendler entitled “Egyptian Literature through the Ages,” which uses genre-based comparisons to examine literature of the Nile Valley from the third millennium until the present day. In addition to surveys of Egyptian Middle Kingdom literature and historical texts, she has offered text courses entitled “Egyptian and Nubian Historical Texts” and “Late Egyptian Stories.”

Recent Publications

Monographs

2007 The Late Egyptian Underworld: Sarcophagi and Related Texts from the Nectanebid Period, Ägypten und Altes Testament, Otto Harrassowitz.

2007 Tutankhamun’s Armies: Battle and Conquest during Ancient Egypt’s Late Eighteenth Dynasty, John Wiley & Sons (with John Darnell)

Articles

2010    “Isis, Mistress of the Field. A New Reading of an Epithet in the Hor Ostraca,”  Enchoria 32, in press.

2010    “The New Kingdom,” in I. Shaw and J. Allen, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Egyptian Archaeology, forthcoming.

2010    “The Yale University Mo‘alla Survey Project: First Season Results,” Egyptian Archaeology, forthcoming.

2010    “Mo‘alla,” in W. Wendrich, et al., eds., The UCLA Encylopedia of Egyptology, forthcoming.

2010    “A Trustworthy Seal-Bearer on a Mission: The Monuments of Sabastet from the Khephren Diorite Quarries,” in R. Parkinson and H.-W. Fischer-Elfert, eds., Studies in Honor of Detlev Franke (with John Darnell)

2009    “Preliminary Report for the 2008-2009 Season of the Mo‘alla Survey Project,” Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, in press.

2009    “A Graffito of Paris in Luxor Temple and the Myth of Helen’s eidolon,” Zeitschrift für   ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 136: 141-149.

2008    “Sounds of the Netherworld,” Mythos & Ritual, Festschrift für Jan Assmann zum 70. Geburtstag, B. Rothöhler and A. Manisali, eds. (Religionswissenschaft: Forschung und Wissenschaft Bd. 5; Münster: LIT Verlag), pp. 109-135.