DemonThings is an ancient Egyptian Demonology project focused on studying the liminal entities from ancient Egypt. The project was founded by Dr. Kasia Szpakowska while based at Swansea University Wales. As of June 2025, the primary investigators are:
- Dr. Kasia Szpakowska, Independent Scholar (retired from Swansea University)
- Dr. Rita Lucarelli, Associate Professor, Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, University of California, Berkeley
- Dr. Foy Scalf, Interim Director of the ISAC Data Research Center, the Research Archives Library, and the Integrated Database, Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures of the University of Chicago
Funding and support for this new phase of the project has been generously provided by the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures and the University of Chicago, including the hosting of the DemonThings website and server provisioning for the DemonBase. Additional consultation has been provided by the University of California, Berkeley.
Research Agenda
As important as “supernatural” creatures are in everyday life, until recently there had been no systematic study of liminial entities in ancient Egypt. However, scholars such as Rita Lucarelli (Berkeley), Hans Fischer-Elfert (Leipzig), Panagiotis Kousoulis (Rhodes), Ludwig Morenz (Bonn), and Kasia Szpakowska (Swansea), among others, have each been independently researching aspects of the topic.
The time span covered by the primary source evidence is large, from the the third millennium BCE through the Roman Period (ca. 3000 BCE–400 CE). For the textual material alone, sources are found in all phases of the ancient Egyptian language (Old Egyptian, Middle Egyptian, Late Egyptian, Demotic, and Coptic), as well as Greek, Aramaic, and others. The data includes textual sources (spells, funerary texts, temple and artifact inscriptions), iconography (representations on papyrus, tomb walls, artifacts), and objects (figurines).
Demonology 2K: Second Millennium BCE
In its initial iteration, a discrete subproject called Demonology 2K focused on the material from the second milennium BCE (ca. 2000–1000 BCE). Dr. Szpakowska, her students, and collaborators created a Filemaker database (see DemonBase) to catalog liminal entities for researchers and the public alike. The subproject explores the world of demons in second millennium BCE in ancient Egypt (2000–1000 BCE), roughly the time of the Middle–New Kingdoms.
Thanks to the generous funding of the Leverhulme Trust and the support of Swansea University’s Research Institute for Arts and Humanities (RIAH), two PhD students, Zuzanna Bennett (Swansea University) and Felicitas Weber (Bonn University), joined Kasia Szpakowska at Swansea University for three years, starting in January 2013 to bring these demons into the light.
We are very grateful for the work, support, and help from all previous and current collaborators, including:
- Zuzanna Bennett (PhD Egyptology Candidate, research)
- Felicitas Weber (PhD Egyptology Candidate, research, artwork)
- Amber Furmage (BA Egyptology, artwork)
- Alexander Roberts (Web Team Management)
- Eoin Grua (MSc Computer Science, database, website design)
- Panagiotis Kousoulis (Associate Professor of Egyptology, Department of Mediterranean Studies, University of the Aegean, Rhodes, Greece)
- Craig Calvert (Website and Database Design)
- Amy Calvert (Website and Database Design)
- Dr. Ken Griffin (Photos)
- Campbell Price (Photos)
Demon Things Website 2013–2017
The DemonThings website (demonthings.com) was previously hosted on WordPress actively between 2013–2017. Archive.org has archived versions of the previous website through the WayBack Machine. Control of the domain was lost between 2017–2025, when it was reacquired. Previous links from demonthings.com now point to the current version of the website hosted through the University of Chicago’s Voices platform.