Thomas Schneider studied at the University of Zurich, the University of Basel and the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris, earning a Lizentiat (1990), a doctorate (1996), and a Habilitation (1999) in Egyptology at the University of Basel.

Prior to coming to UBC in 2007, he was a Lecturer in Egyptology at the University of Zurich (2000-3), a Junior Research Professor of the Swiss National Science Foundation at the University of Basel (2001-5) and Professor and holder of the Chair in Egyptology at the University of Wales, Swansea (2005-8). He held Visiting Professorships at the University of Vienna (1999), the University of Heidelberg (2003-4) and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2018). He was a Visiting Scholar at New York University (2006), the University of California, Berkeley (2012), as well as a Guest Lecturer at the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing (2016) and at Shanghai University (2018).

From 2018-20, he was Associate Vice President (International) at the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, China. From 2016-7, he served in a part-time role as Advisor to the President at Quest University Canada. From 2014-8, he was a member of the UBC Senate and worked, among other projects, on a Responsible Conduct of Research Initiative by the Dean and Vice Provost, Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies.

He is the founding editor of the “Journal of Egyptian History” (2008-2014) and was the editor of “Culture and History of the Ancient Near East” (Brill, 2006-2013) and “Near Eastern Archaeology” (American Schools of Oriental Research, 2012-2018).

From 2021-2022, he was the founding Executive Director of the Pacific Alliance of Liberal Arts Colleges (PALAC). On January 1, 2023, he took up the position of Chief Executive of the Association of Pacific Rim Universities (www.apru.org).

Research Interests

• Egyptian history and chronology
• Cultural relations between ancient Egypt and the Near East
• History of Egyptology in Nazi Germany
• Egyptian historical phonology
• Hebrew Bible

COMPLETE PUBLICATIONS

Link to updated publications – https://ubc.academia.edu/ThomasSchneider

Recent publications (2018-2023):

Monographs and edited volumes

Language Contact in Ancient Egypt. Einführungen und Quellentexte zur Ägyptologie, 16. Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2023.
262 pp., 4 figs https://www.lit-verlag.de/isbn/978-3-643-91507-8

Thomas Schneider and Christine Johnston (eds.): The Gift of the Nile? Ancient Egypt and the Environment. Tucson: Egyptian Expedition, 2020. XI and 291 pp. https://egyptianexpedition.org/volumes/gift-of-the-nile-ancient-egypt-and-the-environment/

Juan Carlos Moreno García and Thomas Schneider (eds.): Ethnic Identities in Ancient Egypt and the Identity of Egyptology. Journal of Egyptian History Special Volume. 2018. 248 pp. https://brill.com/view/journals/jeh/11/1-2/jeh.11.issue-1-2.xml?language=en

Articles in journals and book contributions

The Meaning of Golem. Psalm 139,16 and Afroasiatic Lexicology in Dialogue. Festschrift contribution (forthcoming) 5500 words.

Does the “First Intermediate Period” Actually Exist? A Period Term and the Problem of Historical Periodization, in: Andrea Pillon (ed.), Chronologies and Contexts of the First Intermediate Period. Colloque internationale de l’IFAO, April 2021. Cairo: IFAO. (forthcoming) 6500 words.

Interconnections of Ancient Egypt and Israel/Judah, 1000-500 BCE, in: S.T. Hollis (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Ancient Egypt and the Bible. Oxford. (forthcoming) 5500 words.

Exodus: Historicity and Historicization, in: S.T. Hollis (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Ancient Egypt and the Bible. Oxford. (forthcoming). 4000 words.

Moses the Egyptian? A Reassessment of the Etymology of the Name ‘Moses’. Festschrift Contribution. (forthcoming). 4200 words.

(with Bryan Edward Penprase) Strengthening the Liberal Arts Along the Pacific Rim: The Pacific Alliance of Liberal Arts Colleges (PALAC). Berkeley Center for Studies in Higher Education. Research and Occasional Paper Series: CSHE.2.2023
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1gp7h1j3

The Egyptian Nile: Human Transformation of an Ancient River (with J. Bunbury, J. Cooper, R. Hoath, S. Ikram, C. Johnston). In: Karl Matthias Wantzen (ed.): River Culture – Life as aDance to the Rhythm of the Waters. UNESCO Publishing, Paris 2022, 43-77. DOI: 10.54677/MDJN3102

Hermann Grapow, Egyptology and National Socialist Initiatives for the Humanities, 1938-1945. In: Bernard M. Levinson and Robert Ericksen (ed.): Betrayal of the Humanities: The University during the Third Reich. Studies in Antisemitism. Indiana University Press. 2022, 263-305.

Obituary / Nachruf auf Erik Hornung (1933-2022).
https://daw.philhist.unibas.ch/de/aegyptologie/portrait/hornung/
https://daw.philhist.unibas.ch/en/egyptology/portrait/hornung/

Language Contact. In Andréas Stauder and Willeke Wendrich (eds.), UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, Los Angeles. 2022. 13,000 words. https://escholarship.org/content/qt1px3x3fq/qt1px3x3fq.pdf

(with Bryan Penprase): After Yale-NUS closure, liberal arts in Asia will benefit from peer support, in: Times Higher Education Magazine, September 23, 2021.
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/after-yale-nus-closure-liberal-arts-asia-will-benefit-peer-support

From Object to Subject: Towards a New Narrative for the Nile and Water in Ancient Egyptian Civilization, in: Thomas
Schneider and Christine L. Johnston (eds.): Gift of the Nile? Ancient Egypt and the Environment. Tucson: Egyptian
Expedition 2020, 1-14.

(with J. Bunbury, P.P. Creasman, A. Graham, C. Johnston, N. Moeller, J. Rowland, L.A. Warden, and W. Wendrich) A Manifesto for the Study of the Ancient Egyptian Environment, in: Thomas Schneider and Christine L. Johnston (eds.): Gift of the Nile? Ancient Egypt and the Environment. Tucson: Egyptian Expedition 2020, 215-6.

Students should be Masters of Postgraduate Offerings, in: Times Higher Education Magazine, May 28, 2020. Print version: Students should be the masters of choices in postgraduate degrees.
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/students-should-be-masters-postgraduate-offerings

Language Contact of Ancient Egyptian with Semitic and other Near Eastern Languages. In: Rebecca Hasselbach-Andee (ed.): A Companion to Ancient Near Eastern Languages. Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World. 2020, 421-437.

(with Wolfgang Schütte) „Adramelech, der Äthiopier“ (2 Kön 17,4 ANT): Eine neue Quelle zu den Beziehungen zwischen Hosea von Israel und der kuschitischen 25. Dynastie? In: Biblische Notizen 182(2019), 69-90.

古埃及的医学与巫术：重估两者的关系 – Medicine and Magic in Ancient Egypt: Reassessing their Relationship]. In: Journal of the Social History of Medicine and Health 3/2 (2018), 143-160.

Egyptology in Nazi Germany: Ideology, Scholarship, Careers. Public Lecture in Memory of Hans Jakob Polotsky at the Halbert Centre for Canadian Studies, Hebrew University. Available at https://openscholar.huji.ac.il/polotskynow (uploaded December 30, 2018)

The Stigma of Submission: Reassessing Sisera’s Fate in Judges 5,25-27. In: Tell it in Gath. Studies in the History and Archaeology of Israel Essays in Honor of Aren M. Maeir on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday Edited by Itzhaq Shai, Jeffrey R. Chadwick, Louise Hitchcock, Amit Dagan, Chris McKinny, and Joe Uziel = Ägypten und Altes Testament 90. Münster: Zaphon, 2018, 562–576.

Ethnic Identities in Ancient Egypt and the Identity of Egyptology: Towards a “Trans-Egyptology”.In: Juan Carlos Moreno Garcia and Thomas Schneider (eds.): Ethnic Identities in Ancient Egypt and the Identity of Egyptology. Journal of Egyptian History 11(2018), 241-244.

Hyksos Research in Egyptology and Egypt’s Public Imagination: A Brief Assessment of Fifty Years of Assessments. In:
Juan Carlos Moreno Garcia and Thomas Schneider (eds.): Ethnic Identities in Ancient Egypt and the Identity of Egyptology. Journal of Egyptian History 11 (2018), 73–86.

Khyan’s Place in History: A New Look at the Chronographic Tradition. In: I Forstner-Müller and N. Moeller (eds.), The Hyksos Ruler Khyan and the Early Second Intermediate Period in Egypt. Proceedings of the Workshop of the Austrian Archaeological Institute and the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Vienna, July 4-5, 2014. Ergänzungshefte zu den Jahresheften des Österreichischen Archäologischen Institutes in Wien. 2018, 277-285.

Hitler, Goebbels and the Frogs on the Nile: A 1931 Political Photomontage. Aegyptiaca: Journal of the Reception of Ancient Egypt 2(2018), 4-24. https://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/aegyp/article/download/48021/41481/

Double A Double Abecedary? Halaªam and ’Abgad on the TT99 Ostracon. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 379(2018), 103-112.

A Land Without Prophets? Examining the Presumed Lack of Prophecy in Ancient Egypt, in: C.A. Rollston (ed.), Enemies and Friends of the State: Ancient Prophecy in Context. Winona Lake, In.: Eisenbrauns, 2018, 58-83.