Michael Tritsch is a PhD Candidate in Egyptology at Yale University, specializing in “community religion” in ancient Egypt. His primary focus is on informal religious practices, as evidenced through archaeological, art historical, and textual evidence, utilizing anthropological approaches to better understand these phenomena. He has five peer-reviewed articles in publication and has presented talks at over 20 conferences worldwide. Mike has worked extensively at the Mut Precinct in Luxor, Egypt, as well as at Tell Edfu and Megiddo, Israel, excavating domestic remains and at the Smithsonian Environmental Archaeology Laboratory performing faunal analysis. Mike is also passionate about teaching, with an emphasis on facilitating his student’s intellectual growth and developing their critical thinking and writing skills. At Yale, he has taught several Egyptological classes, including “Writing Egyptology: Reflecting on Life and Death in Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Bible” which explored the inevitability of human suffering and the possibility of a greater reward through the close reading of ancient Near Eastern Pessimistic Wisdom Literature. A Woodrow Wilson Undergraduate Research Fellow and an Albright Institute of Archaeological Research Undergraduate Archaeological Fellow, Mike received his B.A. from Johns Hopkins University, double majoring in Near Eastern Studies and Archaeology, with a concentration in Egyptology.