Miriam Lichtheim (Hebrew: מרים ליכטהיים; 3 May 1914, Istanbul – 27 March 2004, Jerusalem) was a Turkish-born American-Israeli egyptologist, known for her translations of ancient Egyptian texts.
Miriam was born in Istanbul on May 3, 1914, to Richard Lichtheim – a German-born Jewish politician, publicist, and notable Zionist – and his wife Irene (née Hafter), a Sephardic Jew whose first language was Greek.
In a paper of recollections about her teacher,[3] she recalls that, at the beginning of the year, in Polotsky's Egyptian class there were four students; at the end, only she remained.
During Miriam's time at the Hebrew University, her father Richard became the representative of the World Zionist Organisation at the League of Nations, and relocated to Geneva with Irene.
In this work, she describes the genesis and evolution of different literary genres in Egypt, based on ostraca, inscriptions engraved in stone, and texts of papyri.