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Mariam Ayad
- Position: Associate Professor
- Department: Department of Sociology, Egyptology and Anthropology
- Email: [email protected]
A graduate of The American University of Cairo's (AUC) Egyptology program, Mariam Ayad '94 returned to AUC after many years of studying and working abroad. Prior to her return, Ayad was a tenured associate professor of art history and Egyptology at the University of Memphis, in the United States, where she also served as an assistant director of the Institute of Egyptian Art and Archaeology from 2003 to 2010.
At the University of Memphis, Ayad taught Middle and Late Egyptian grammar and Egyptian literature. She offered courses in Coptic and ancient Egyptian historical texts read in Hieratic. She also taught an introductory world art class.
At AUC, Ayad teaches a year-long course on Middle Egyptian grammar (Egyptian hieroglyphics) as well as graduate seminars on Egypt in the first millennium BC, Nubian cultures and society, and ancient Egyptian women in temple ritual. Ayad also teaches an introduction to Coptic class, and has led classes focusing on ancient Egyptian literature and Late Egyptian historical texts.
Ayad continues to serve as director of the Opening of the Mouth Epigraphic Project at the Tomb of Harwa (TT 37) in Luxor. She is also a peer reviewer for the American Journal of Archaeology, the Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt and AUC Press.
Ayad obtained her MA in ancient near eastern civilizations, specializing in the Egyptian language and literature, with a minor in Egyptian archaeology at the University of Toronto in 1996, before accepting a fellowship to pursue her PhD in Egyptology at Brown University in the United States.
At Brown, Ayad focused her research on ancient Egyptian mortuary texts, the third intermediate period and the role of women in temple hierarchy. Her dissertation, "The Funerary Texts of Amenirdis I: Analysis of their Layout and Purpose", successfully defended in December 2002, combined her three major areas of interest.
- Social history and religion in the Third Intermediate and Late Periods
- Transmission and layout of Egyptian funerary texts (including Opening of the Mouth, Pyramid and Coffin Texts, Solar Hymns, Books of the Hours of Night and Day) on New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period monument
- Status and Iconography of women in ancient Egypt
- The role of ancient Egyptian women in temple ritual
- The significance of the titles Gods Wife of Amun and God's Hand
- Egyptian grammar and language (Old Egyptian through Coptic)
- Survival of ancient Egyptian idioms in modern colloquial Egyptian Arabic
- Epigraphy