Ida Adsbøl Christensen received her BA and MA degrees in Egyptology at the University of Copenhagen in 2017 and 2019, respectively. As an undergraduate student, she undertook coursework focused on ancient Egyptian philology and Classical Greek philosophy, history, and science, while developing an interest for the cross-cultural environment of Graeco-Roman Egypt. During her graduate studies, she advanced her training in Egyptian philology with courses in Hieratic, Late Egyptian, and Demotic at the University of Copenhagen, and further coursework in Demotic and Abnormal Hieratic at Leiden University. Ida continued to pursue her interest in the Graeco-Roman period as an MA student, gradually narrowing her focus to the subject of Egyptian science, particularly astrology and other types of divination. Consequently, she edited parts of an unpublished astrological handbook in Demotic housed in the Papyrus Carlsberg Collection for her MA thesis.
At ISAW, Ida intends to continue her research on ancient science by exploring the development of Egyptian astrology through a comparative study of Egyptian divinatory literature and astrological practice in cultures of the ancient Near East and Mediterranean. Her project will address the characteristics of ancient Egyptian astrology and the topic of cross-cultural influence between Egyptian, Greek, and Babylonian astrological traditions through the critical analysis of sources in Egyptian, Greek, and Akkadian. Ida’s doctoral research will involve a case study including the edition of a selection of unpublished Demotic astrological papyri from the ancient city of Tebtunis in the Fayum. The manuscripts are housed in the Papyrus Carlsberg Collection in Copenhagen and the Istituto Papirologico ‘G. Vitelli’ in Florence and offer a comprehensive view of Egyptian astrological knowledge and practice that adds significantly to the corpus of published scientific sources from ancient Egypt.