Scienceמרים ליכטהיים

Miriam Lichtheim

Miriam Lichtheim was an American-Israeli Egyptologist, librarian and translator, known for her translations of ancient Egyptian texts.

1914 to 2004Translating ancient Egyptian textsAncient Egyptian Literature anthologyNear East bibliography at UCLA

Born: 3 May 1914, Istanbul
Died: 27 March 2004, Jerusalem
Occupation: academic librarian, Egyptologist, university teacher
Education: University of Chicago, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Miriam Lichtheim was born in 1914 in Istanbul

Lichtheim was born in 1914 in Constantinople to Richard Lichtheim, a German-born Zionist politician and diplomat, and Irene Lichtheim, from a Greek-speaking Sephardic Jewish family. Her older brother was the journalist George Lichtheim. The family returned to Germany in 1919.

In 1934 the family emigrated to Mandatory Palestine. She studied Egyptian under Hans Jakob Polotsky at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In 1941 she went to the United States and earned a PhD in Egyptology at the University of Chicago Oriental Institute.

She worked as an academic librarian at Yale University and then at the University of California, Los Angeles. There she was Near East Bibliographer and Lecturer until she retired in 1974. Between 1973 and 1980 she published the 3 volumes of Ancient Egyptian Literature.

In 1982 she returned to Israel and taught at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She continued to publish studies on Egyptian autobiographies and moral values. She died in 2004.