Research: Coptic Illumination (8th–19th century): Semantic, Economy, and Identity
Matthias Egger is a PhD candidate at the École Pratique des Hautes Études – Université Paris Sciences et Lettres, with an international cotutelle at the Sapienza Università di Roma, under the joint supervision of Prof. Ioanna Rapti and Prof. Paola Buzi, and he is affiliated to the UMR 8167 Orient & Méditerranée – Monde Byzantin. His research is funded by a doctoral fellowship from the Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art, where he is a member of the CallFront programme – Calligraphies in Arabic Script at the Frontiers of the Islamicate World, directed by Prof. Éloïse Brac de la Perrière. He also collaborates with the RePaZ unit – Recherche et Patrimoine en Zones de crises, and with the research and scientific valorisation project devoted to the Nicole and Jean-Michel Thierry scientific archive held at the INHA.
His doctoral research, entitled Coptic Illumination (8th–19th century): Economy, Semantics, Identity, focuses on illuminated Coptic manuscript tradition from the early centuries of Islamic Egypt to the introduction of printing in Egypt, through a corpus of Coptic and Coptic-Arabic Gospels produced in Cairo and in the surrounding monasteries. This dissertation seeks to examine the graphic gestures that mark and accompany the production of these sacred objects, while interrogating the copying, use and transmission of these books over time as well as the networks of those who created and collected them.
Matthias Egger attended the École du Louvre for his undergraduate studies, before completing a master's degree in Art History and Archaeology at the EPHE – PSL, with a thesis devoted to the Coptic Gospels ms. Copte 13 held at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Alongside his academic training, he carried out, in 2023, a cataloguing mission of Coptic manuscripts held at the Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale in Cairo, and, in 2024, contributed to the inventory of the Nicole and Jean-Michel Thierry archive collection at the INHA.