Dr Maxwell Stocker

Profile

I am a cultural historian who specialises in Archaic and Classical Greek literature and in Graeco-Egyptian studies. My research agenda addresses the cultural history of the Graeco-Egyptian relationship from the Early Mycenaean Period to the Classical Period, and aims to develop a new cross-disciplinary platform for bringing together the disciplines of Classics and Egyptology in the 21st century. I have multidisciplinary expertise in Classics and Egyptology, and am committed to raising awareness of the pivotal and long-neglected topic of Egyptian cultural and literary influences on the Greek world during the second and first millennia BC. Over the years of my PhD at St Andrews, I acted as a catalyst for bringing together and cohering the disparate presence of Egyptology in Scotland with a range of teaching and public-outreach activities. I also have a history of academic, institutional, and administrative collaboration with colleagues in the Italian academic system.

My doctoral thesis (St Andrews, 2023) is a comparative exploration of portrayals of displacement, exile, and homecoming in two of the premier travel poems of the ancient Mediterranean world: the Tale of Sinuhe and the Odyssey. I have published on a range of topics concerning the Graeco-Egyptian cultural relationship, as well as on Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Egyptian archaeology of the Late Bronze Age. I am currently preparing my first monograph, which presents the first comprehensive study of the Egyptian cultural and literary influences on the Odyssey. I am also working on a range of further projects on Graeco-Egyptian topics.