Oxford's Pitt Rivers Museum houses seventeen collections of Palaeolithic material from Egypt, comprising a total of 1009 objects. None of the objects were recovered during excavation but many were found by pioneers of prehistoric archaeology and notable anthropologists. The most significant and largest collection, which forms the focus of much of this study, is that of Charles Seligmann and dates from the first fourteen years of the 20th century. The first half of the book sets the background, examining the origins of Egyptian Palaeolithic archaeology, supported by extracts from diaries and contemporary publications, as well as discussing the types of stone artefacts collected, the cultures of the Egyptian Palaeolithic and more recent developments in research. The second half of the book presents catalogues of each collection with the artefacts illustrated at actual size. An appendix lists items from Seligman's collections which are now housed in other museums.

Animal burials, whether buried with human remains or alone, are frequent discoveries in Egypt yet it can be difficult to reconstruct their religious and cultural significance. This study examines animals in human graves, possibly intended as food offerings, but the emphasis is on independent Predynastic animal burials because these provide greater archaeological evidence for animal cults and possible sacrifice. Flores examines the geographic distribution of the burials and the types of animal represented, including goats, dogs and, in more elite tombs, donkeys, birds, bulls and lions. Throughout, comparisons are made between cultures from Upper and Lower Egypt.

This volume reports on the results of survey work carried out in Sudan in advance of the construction of the Merowe Dam. A short introduction leads into the main body of the volume which forms a gazetteer of sites (artefact scatters, settlements, fortified enclosures and cemeteries) reflecting extensive occupation over long periods. Rich in archaeological material, the remainder of the volume includes analyses of pottery, small finds, lithics and rock art from the area. This report clearly reflects the rich archaeology of the area and, since only small areas could be examined in detail, the large amount of material that will be lost.

Kom el-Hisn is located near the western edge of the Nile delta, midway between Cairo and Alexandria, and about 13 km west of the Rosetta branch of the Nile. It is composed of primarily Old Kingdom deposits (Dynasties V and VI, ca. 2500-2290 BC) but the site was also occupied in the Middle and New Kingdom periods. (It has been suggested that some First Intermediate burials are included within the Old Kingdom architecture, and Kom el-Hisn clearly flourished during the height of Old Kingdom power.) After a detailed introduction, the author reviews the development of Egyptian settlement patterns and structures to provide the Old Kingdom context, before continuing to discuss the specific issues relating to the current research and some of the explanations offered by other researchers for the development of Egypt's particular brand of complex society. Chapter four describes the research programme that provided the data on which this study relies, and subsequent headings contain detailed descriptions of the deposits associated with each excavation unit in the analysis.Before the full summary in the ultimate chapter, there are statistical analyses that build the model of functional differentiation found within the excavated areas. The study as a whole places Kon el-Hisn within the larger context of the Egyptian state structure and allows some conclusions to be drawn as to how this important site functioned within this structure.

The University College London Lahun (Middle Kingdom) papyri constitute one of the most remarkable harvests of papyri of any age. This volume communicates the content of the surviving letters and letter fragments from the Petrie excavations at Lahun in an accessible and affordable format. The letters and fragments are from original letters: model letters, letter copies, and reports are reserved for future publications. The volume is intended not only for Egyptological researchers, but also for learners in higher and further education. This mass of writing calls for a more nuanced appreciation of the roles of writing and reading, and the social reach of the written culture across the different classes, ages, genders inhabiting this architecture and landscape. (The reader will find three means of access to the original content: Printed pages with transcriptions, transliterations, and translations: A printed index: The entire collection of papyri on an accompanying CD.)

This book studies the royal festivals in the Egyptian Late Predynastic period and the First Dynasty. (The chronological beginning here is the Naqada IId period and the author includes a brief account of royal festivals in the contemporary Lower Nubia and the Second Dynasty.) The Egyptian kings developed a complex system of ceremonies and rituals that served them as a form of expression before society. The ways were complex and varied, but so effective that most of these festivals continued to be performed for more than three thousand years. The author begins with an historical outline of the unification process and the First Dynasty before exploring the main themes of kingship and festivals. The points of discussion include temple structures (Abydos, Saqqara, Hierakonpolis), festival traditions, the 'sed' festival, 'victory festivals', the festival of 'Sokar', and symbolic topography.

These nine papers are taken from a session at the EAA conference held in Esslington in 2001 which dealt with themes of interest to both the Egyptological community and to European archaeologists alike. The contributors deal with a range of subjects: recent Russian and Hellenic investigations in Egypt; the history of European Egyptology; political, cultural and economic contacts between Europe and Egypt in Dynastic, Hellenic-Roman and early Christian periods; links between ancient populations of Europe and Egypt drawing on anthropological data.

After the death of the last of the ramessides, Smendes, Lord of Tanis, proclaimed himself Pharaoh, founded the XXI dynasty and initiated one of the most unknown but attractive periods in the history of Egypt, the Third Intermediate Period. This book deals with the burials in the Valley of the Kings in the 21st - 30th Dynasties of Egypt, when they were not used by the rulers anymore. Through detailed investigation of the tombs and the hieroglyphes, the author has tried to identify the individuals buried in these tombs. The royal New Kingdom tombs were taken as a reference point and a comparison with the texts and iconography was established. This enables a better understandong of the traditions that followed in the Third Intermediate Period and naturally the changes that had taken place in the choice of the religious compendiums and representations associated with this period.

The excavations of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at Marsa Matruh on Bates's Island, which is located on the seacoast at the north of Egypt's western desert, uncovered a small site with a metalworking workshop and nearby houses. The pottery found in the excavations indicates that this small Late Bronze Age settlement had links to several cultures: Cyprus, the Aegean, Egypt, the coast of western Asia, and the local Marmarican people. The results of the excavations are published in two volumes. This volume provides an overview of the excavations at the site, the Late Bronze Age and historical period occupations, and an introduction to the environmental morphology and history of the island.

The Ancient Art of Transformation: Case Studies from Mediterranean Contexts examines instances of human transformation in the ancient and early Christian Mediterranean world by exploring the ways in which art impacts, aids, or provides evidence for physical, spiritual, personal, and social transitions. Building on Arnold van Gennep's notion of universal rites of passage, papers in this volume expand the definition of "transformation" to include widespread transitions such as shifts in political establishments and changes in cultural identity. In considering these broadly defined "passages," authors have observed particular changes in the visual record, whether they be manifest, enigmatic, or symbolic. While several papers address transitions that are incomplete, resulting in intermediary, hybrid states, others suggest that the medium itself can be integral to interpreting a transition, and in some cases, be itself transformed. Together, the volume covers not only a broad chronological span (c. 5th century BC to 4th century AD), but also an expansive geographical range (Egypt, Greece, and Italy). Reflecting upon issues central to a variety of Mediterranean cultures (Egyptians, Etruscans, Greeks, Romans, and early Christians), The Ancient Art of Transformation documents how personal, societal, and historical changes become permanently fixed in the material record. The Ancient Art of Transformation examines the visual manifestation of human transformation in the ancient and early medieval Mediterranean world, exploring the role of art and visual culture in enabling, hindering, or documenting physical, spiritual, personal, and social transitions such as pregnancy and birth, initiations, marriage, death and funerals. The definition of "transformation" is also expanded to address instances of less personal and more widespread transitions such as shifts in political establishments and changes in cultural identity in geographic locations. Additionally, although the ancient material record documents certain rites of passage such as marriage and death extensively, artifacts and their accompanying images are often studied simply to reconstruct these social processes. Authors here suggest that material evidence itself can be integral to interpreting a transition, and in some cases, be itself transformed. Further, several papers address transitions that are incomplete, resulting in intermediary, hybrid states that are very often reflected in the visual record such as Athenian vase-painting imagery forecasting the bride as a mother, displays of nudity that reflect intermediate life stages in Etruscan art and Octavian's visual transformation into Pharaoh and Augustus in Egyptian architecture and material culture. At its core the volume establishes current methods for understanding how ancient visual culture shaped, informed, and was affected by processes of transformation. Together, these papers offer a close examination of various types of visual evidence from several cultures and periods (e.g., Etruscan, Greek, Roman, early Christian), and document how personal, societal, historical changes become permanently fixed in the material record.

Hierakonpolis, located less than 100km south of Luxor, has been excavated at various times since the end of the 19th century with much work carried out by Michael Hoffman in the 1980s. This report builds on Hoffman's work and forms the background to renewed investigations at the site by Adams and others. It presents material from 12 tombs which are part of the large cemetery, including descriptions of the tomb form and type, and artifacts found within them, as well as plant, human and faunal remains. These finds are then compared with material from other parts of the Hierakonpolis site.

An indispensable companion to any of the other volumes of Ancient Records of Egypt, the Supplementary Bibliographies and Indices facilitates direct access to specific information on the people, places, and inscriptions catalogued by James Henry Breasted. Exhaustively compiled and intelligently arranged, these indices include the kings and queens, temples and geographical locations, divine names, and titles and ranks encompassed by three thousand years of Egyptian history. Also provided are indices of all Egyptian, Hebrew, and Arabic terms mentioned in the texts, as well as a complete listing of the records with their location in Lepsius's Denkmaler. This first paperback edition of Ancient Records of Egypt features the important addition of bibliographies by Peter A. Piccione, together with an introduction that puts Breasted's historical commentaries into modern perspective. These bibliographies offer valuable guidance on new translations and modern treatments of the inscriptions included in Ancient Records of Egypt. Professor Piccione points the reader toward recent studies of Egyptian chronology and modern scholarship on Egyptian and Nubian history. He also provides information on anthologies of Egyptian texts in translation and topographical bibliographies that suggest further reading on specific ancient Egyptian monuments, texts, and reliefs.

The potential of the scarab seal is still neglected by many archaeologists. They are primarily considered for chronological purposes, and so their capacity as an historical document is under-rated, as is their value as an archaeological tool. Luckily, more recent studies are beginning to assess the archaeological and historical value of scarabs, and in particular design scarabs, revealing them as potential indicators of cultural interaction, and it is within this genre that the anra (identified always by a sequence of hieroglyphs which includes the letters n and r) scarab is considered in this extensive study. The aim of this work is to try and establish the status, function, meaning, and significance of the anra scarab, and possibly offer something new with regard to the nature of the relationships that existed between the countries of Africa and the Levant during the latter part of the Middle Bronze Age.

A selection of 17 papers from the first Symposium of "Current Research in Egyptology", held in Oxford in 2000. The Symposium was held to foster communication and exchange of ideas among students of Egyptology at UK institutions. The UK enjoys a wealth of Egyptological resources, but it is sometimes difficult for graduate students from different universities to interact. In many cases, the very diverse papers presented, constitute ongoing research, offering authors the opportunity to formulate the current state of their work, and to present it to a wider audience. Topics covered range from "Hysteria Revisited: Women's Public Health in Ancient Egypt" to "Papyrological Evidence of Travelling in Byzantine Egypt".

Before its inundation in 1965, the island of Meinarti was situated at the foot of the Second Nile Cataract, 10km south of the town of Wadi Halfa. It was the last place that could be reached, at all times of the year, by large watercraft travelling upriver, a circumstance clearly important in shaping the history of the settlement. The total excavation work covered 18 occupation levels, varying in date from the 2nd or 3rd centuries to the 17th century AD. This volume processes in detail the Late Meroitic and Ballana phases (c. 200-660 AD), and is the first in five volume series.

Although the Ptolemaic royal image has been the subject of many individual studies, there remains an imbalance in the extent of scholarly attention devoted to the different styles of imagery. The aims of the present publication are to assess the interaction between the Greek and Egyptian Ptolemaic royal representations (from about the third century B.C.), and to establish a relative chronological sequence for developments in the presentation of the royal family, where possible identifying individual rulers. The book's material is divided according to classification, and the various functions of the different types of royal image will also be considered. Includes a catalogue section detailing 70 pieces of sculpture from major museum collections and elsewhere.

The Nile is arguably the most famous river in the world. For millennia, the search for its source defeated emperors and explorers. Yet the search for its source also contained a religious quest - a search for the origin of its divine and life-giving waters. Terje Oestigaard reveals how the beliefs associated with the river have played a key role in the cultural development and make-up of the societies and civilizations associated with it. Drawing upon his personal experience and fieldwork in Africa, including details of rites and ceremonies now fast disappearing, the author brings out in rich detail the religious and spiritual meanings attached to the life-giving waters by those whose lives are so bound to the river. Part religious quest, part exploration narrative, the author shows how this mighty river is a powerful source for a greater understanding of human nature, society and religion.

The use of Neutron Activation Analysis opens up enormous possibilities for studying and identifying the chemical composition of clays from pottery vessels and, subsequently, for investigating the origins and possible place of manufacture for these vessels. This publication and the research on which it is based, completes the work of Joan Huntoon whose dissertation focused on the origins, distribution and trade of Middle Bronze Canaanite Jars, with the site of Tel el-Daba featuring prominently. Patrick McGovern uses Huntoon's programme of NAA analyses in making inferences on the production, movement and trade of Canaanite jars, polished, painted and other vessels around the Near East and Aegean.

At first sight, it seems that ancient Egyptian history and culture have no meaningful ties with present-day Croatia. However, when we scratch beneath the surface of the common idea of Egypt, that of a distant and ancient civilisation, we notice that its elements have been present in Croatia ever since antiquity. Egypt in Croatia provides a closer look at many aspects of the presence and fascination of ancient Egyptian culture in Croatia, from antiquity to the present. The topics explored are the artefacts discovered in present-day Croatia (mostly from the early 19th century), Croatian travellers to Egypt from the 16th to the middle of the 20th century, Egyptian collections in Croatia and early collectors from the 1820s until the 1950s, an overview of the development of Egyptology of study within Croatia as well as the various elements of 'Egyptomania' found in Croatia, mostly from the beginning of the 19th century.

Contents: The Construction; History; Builders; Mystery of its Purpose; Symbol of Science; Geographical Significance; Mathematical Symbolism; Law of Cycles; Astrological Sybmolism; Biblical Prophecies; Recent World Events; Human Progress; The New Age; Fulfillment of the Pyramid's Prophetic Symbolism; Ancient Pyramid Builders of the Americas.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

As one of the few surviving artefacts from the late prehistory of north-east Africa, pottery serves as an essential material category by which to explore long-term human development. This book presents a major study on the ceramics recovered from early and mid-Holocene sites in Egypt's Dakhleh Oasis, which come from 96 registered sites and five other findspots and comprise more than 10,000 sherds. In addition, there is little proxy evidence to support the manufacture of pottery in the form of kilns, clay firedogs, and other firing equipment. None of the ceramic objects come from burials. They derive instead from settlement sites that display evidence of living activities (hut circles, hearths, chipped stone scatters, etc.), or sites for which there is no other evidence of human activity. Through detailed description, classification and quantification, a detailed cultural sequence has been determined, demonstrating descrete stylistic variations between sites and over time, and highlighting growing diversity and innovation in local pottery-making from the late seventh to mid-third millennia cal. BC. These shifts help to refine the characterisation of local cultural units within the Holocene sequence for Dakhleh Oasis, and to compare against parallel pottery traditions elsewhere in the desert. A firmer grounding in the oasis ceramics, as detailed here, offers inroads to examine social practices and the interconnectedness of desert groups of the ancient Eastern Sahara.

A revised work, based on the author's doctoral research, which examines the Meroitic Civilization in sub-Saharan Africa. Rejecting the common Egyptocentric approach to the subject, Edwards' concern is to develop a more social archaeology, and explore linkages between state structure, population and material culture. His aim is to adopt an African oriented standpoint, refusing to rely only upon monuments, the higher arts, and inscriptions, to produce a traditional historical narrative. Using modern advances in theory and methodology, the analysis covers 'power bases' (subsistence & production, economic administration, manufactures), long-distance exchanges and the prestige goods economy, and thorough interpretation of settlement patterns in lower Nubia. Extensive Bibliography.

In this interdisciplinary study, Leire Olabarria examines ancient Egyptian society through the notion of kinship. Drawing on methods from archaeology and sociocultural anthropology, she provides an emic characterisation of ancient kinship that relies on performative aspects of social interaction. Olabarria uses memorial stelae of the First Intermediate Period and the Middle Kingdom (ca.2150-1650 BCE) as her primary evidence. Contextualising these monuments within their social and physical landscapes, she proposes a dynamic way to explore kin groups through sources that have been considered static. The volume offers three case studies of kin groups at the beginning, peak, and decline of their developmental cycles respectively. They demonstrate how ancient Egyptian evidence can be used for cross-cultural comparison of key anthropological topics, such as group formation, patronage, and rites of passage.

FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHORS OF FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS AND THE ORION MYSTERY 'An exciting book . . . deservedly a bestseller' SPECTATOR ___________________________________________ In Keeper of Genesis, Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval present a tour de force of historical and scientific detective work: * When and where did history begin? * When was the genesis of civilisation in Egypt? * How and why were the Great Sphinx and the three pyramids of Giza designed to serve as parts of an immense three-dimensional model of the sky of 'First Time'? * What is contained in the rectangular chamber that seismic surveys have located in the bedrock far below the paws of the sphinx? * What lies behind the mysterious doors recently discovered at the end of a previously unexplored shaft inside the Great Pyramid? * Does mankind have a rendezvous with destiny - a rendezvous not in the future, but in the distant past - at a precise place and time? Using sophisticated computer simulations of the ancient skies to crack the millennial code that the monuments transcribe, Bauval and Hancock set out a startling new theory of the Pyramid Texts and other archaic Egyptian scriptures. ___________________________________________ 'Reads like a detective story, with the reader enthusiastically trying to outguess the writers' Literary Review 'Start the book in the early evening and continue uninterrupted till you complete it in the small house. The effect is wonderful . . . Your entire world view has been shifted a hundred yards . . . You fall asleep thinking that nothing will ever be the same again' Sunday Telegraph