Fredrik Hagen was born in Stavanger, Norway, in 1977. He read Egyptology at the University of Liverpool (BA 2001), where he developed a particular interest in language and social history under Mark Collier and Chris Eyre. He then moved to Queens’ College, Cambridge, where he graduated with an MPhil in 2002, and, after having moved to Christ’s for his PhD, he was elected as a Budge Fellow in 2005. His thesis sought to reconstruct the social history of an ancient Egyptian wisdom poem by combining material philology (i.e. looking at the materiality of the surviving manuscripts), archaeological context, close readings of the text itself, its transmission history, and intertextual references. This was subsequently published as An Ancient Egyptian Literary Text in Context: The Instruction of Ptahhotep (Peeters, 2012). While he was a fellow at Christ’s he also began to work on a collection of unpublished hieratic texts at the Fitzwilliam Museum, later published as New Kingdom Ostraca from the Fitzwilliam Museum (Brill, 2011) 

During his time at Christ’s he intermitted the fellowship for half a year to take up a temporary Lectureship at the University of Uppsala (2007), and a year after his return to Cambridge, in 2009, he joined the University of Copenhagen, first as Associate Professor and then, in 2017, as Full Professor. In Copenhagen he was elected as a member of the first cohort of the Danish Young Academy (2011-2015).

His research interests are grounded in textual material from the second millennium BC, both in terms of primary editions of new ostraca and papyrus fragments, but also in terms of the social context of writing more broadly, including archives and libraries. In addition to ongoing work on an archive from the Ramesside palace at Medinet el-Gurob (held in the British Museum and the Petrie Museum), he is also responsible for the hieratic material from the recent excavations of the mortuary temple of Thutmose III on the West Bank at Luxor (dir. by Myriam Seco Álvarez). The first volume of material from here, Ostraca from the Temple of a Million Years of Thutmose III, was published by Brill in 2021; a second volume, on the papyrus fragments of the temple archive, is in preparation. He has also worked on the socio-economic aspects of Egyptian tomb construction, and an edited volume (with Daniel Soliman and Rune Olsen) on this topic is currently under contract with Cambridge University Press. A third strand of interest is the history of the trade in Egyptian antiquities, where he wrote a book (with Kim Ryholt) on the period 1880-1930, including the activities of Sir Wallis Budge, whose generous bequest established the Budge Fellowships in Cambridge and Oxford. This is freely available as a pdf from the website of the Royal Danish Society of Sciences and Letters (http://publ.royalacademy.dk/books/684/4906?lang=en), and gives an overview of the mechanics of the trade, the main dealers, the legal framework at the time, as well as the social history of the trade.

Academic publications:

F. Hagen, ‘Controlling Workforces at the Palace: Some Perspectives on Administrative Practice at Kom Medinet Gurob’, in A. Loktionov (ed.), Compulsion and Control in Ancient Egypt: Proceedings of the 3rd Lady Wallis Budge Symposium, 2020 (Archaeopress). In press.

F. Hagen, Ostraca from the Temple of a Million Years of Thutmose III (Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 120, Brill, 2021).

F. Hagen, ‘New Copies of Old Classics: Early Manuscripts of Khakheperreseneb and The Instruction of a Man for his Son’, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 105 (2019), 177-208.

F. Hagen, ‘Libraries in Ancient Egypt, 1500-1000 BC’, in K. Ryholt and G. Barjamovic (eds.), Libraries before Alexandria: Ancient Near Eastern Traditions (Oxford University Press, 2019), 244-318.

F. Hagen (with a contribution by D. Soliman), ‘Archives in Ancient Egypt, 2500-1000 BCE’, in A. Bausi, C. Brockmann, M. Friedrich, and S. Kienitz (eds.), Manuscripts and Archives: Comparative Views on Record-Keeping (Studies in Manuscript Cultures 10, De Gruyter, 2018), 71-170.

F. Hagen, ‘Et nyt tempelarkiv fra Det Nye Rige’, Papyrus 38.1 (2018), 30-33.

F. Hagen and K. Ryholt, ‘The Antiquities Trade in Egypt During the Time of Rudolf Mosse’, in J. Helmbold-Doyé and T. Gertzen (eds.), Mosse im Museum: Die Stiftungstätigkeit des Berliner Verlegers Rudolf Mosse (1843-1920) für das Ägyptische Museum Berlin (Staatliche Museum zu Berlin – Preussischer Kulturbesitz, 2017), 59-74.

F. Hagen and K. Ryholt, The Antiquities Trade in Egypt, 1880-1930: The H. O. Lange Papers (Scientia Danica, Series H, Humanistica 4, vol. 8, Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, 2016). Open Access: http://publ.royalacademy.dk/books/684/4906?lang=en

F. Hagen, ‘On some movements of the royal court in New Kingdom Egypt’, in J. van Dijk (ed.), Another Mouthful of Dust: Egyptological Studies in Honour of Geoffrey Thorndike Martin (Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 246, Peeters, 2016), 155-181.

F. Hagen, review article based on R. J. Demarée and D. Valbelle, Les registres de recensement du village de Deir el-Médineh. In Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 102 (2016), 205-212.

F. Hagen, ‘Hieratic ostraca in the National Museum, Copenhagen’, in R. Nyord and K. Ryholt (eds), Lotus and laurel: studies on Egyptian language and religion in honour of Paul John Frandsen (Museum Tusculanum Press, 2015), 87-102.

F. Hagen, ‘Antikvitetshandel i Egypt, 1880-1930: H. O. Langes reisedagbøker’. In Det Unge Akademi Årsskrift (Yearbook of The Young Academy) 2015, 16-19.

F. Hagen, ‘An Eighteenth Dynasty Writing Board (Ashmolean 1948.91) and The Hymn to the Nile’, Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 49 (2013), 73-91.

F. Hagen, ‘Constructing Textual Identity: Framing and Self-Reference in Egyptian Texts’, in R. Enmarch and V. Lepper (eds.), Ancient Egyptian Literature: Theory and Practice (Proceedings of the British Academy 188, Oxford University Press, 2013), 185-209.

F. Hagen, An Ancient Egyptian Literary Text in Context: The Instruction of Ptahhotep (Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 218, Peeters, 2012).

F. Hagen, ‘Kongen på rejse’, Papyrus 32.1 (2012), 17-23.

F. Hagen, New Kingdom Ostraca from the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 46, Brill, 2011).

F. Hagen et al. (eds.). Narratives of Egypt and the Ancient Near East: Literary and linguistic approaches (Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 189, Peeters, 2011).

F. Hagen, ‘The hieratic dockets on the cuneiform tablets from Amarna’, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 97(2011), 214-216.

F. Hagen, ‘Ægyptisk visdomslitteratur’, Bibliana 2/2011, 6-10

F. Hagen, ‘On some fake hieratic ostraca‘, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 96 (2010), 71-82.

F. Hagen, ‘New Kingdom Sandals: A Philological Perspective’, in A. Veldmeijer (ed.), Tutankhamun’s Footwear (Drukware, 2010), 193-203.

F. Hagen, ‘Echoes of Ptahhotep in the Graeco-Roman Period?’, Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 136 (2009), 130-135.

F. Hagen, ‘A New Ramesside Administrative Papyrus: P. Cambridge University Library MS Add. 4167’, Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 135 (2008), 30-39.

F. Hagen, ‘Local Identities’, in T. A. H. Wilkinson (ed.), The Egyptian World (Routledge, 2007), 242-251.

F. Hagen, ‘Ostraca, Literature and Teaching at Deir el-Medina’, in R. Mairs and A. Stevenson (eds.), Current Research in Egyptology 2005: Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Symposium (Oxbow 2007), 38-51.

F. Hagen, ‘Literature, Transmission, and the Late Egyptian Miscellanies’, in R. Dann (ed.), Current Research in Egyptology 2004: Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Symposium (Oxbow, 2006), 84-99.

F. Hagen and H. Koefoed, ‘Private Feasts at Deir el-Medina: Aspects of eating and drinking in an ancient Egyptian village’, in Archaeological Review from Cambridge 20.2 (2005), 6-31.

F. Hagen, ‘The Prohibitions: A New Kingdom Didactic Text’, in Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 91 (2005), 125-164.

F. Hagen, review of S. Quirke, Egyptian Literature 1800BC: Questions and Readings (Egyptology 2, Golden House Publications, 2004). In Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 93 (2007), 272-274.