This volume is a study of the tombs of officials in the Theban necropolis, now lost, but documented in the manuscripts of travelers to Egypt in the early and mid 19th century. One such traveler was the accomplished draftsman Robert Hay, who made unpublished facsimile drawings which have been re-drawn by the author Lise Manniche for this book. The descriptions and drawings are used to reconstruct the decoration of tomb chapels in the Theban necropolis and to assess their ownership and place in history. The book also examines fragments of relevant wall decorations found in museums and other collections.

Grafton Elliot Smith rose from a colonial Australian background to dizzying heights in the British scientific establishment. He became a world authority on neuroanatomy and human prehistory, holding chairs at Cairo, Manchester and University College, London. He was best known publicly for his challenging theory of cultural diffusion, crossing the boundaries of anthropology, archaeology and history, stemming from his expert knowledge of evolution. Most controversy raged about his "Egyptian" theory, which placed ancient Egypt as the dynamic source from which major elements of civilisation were spread by the migration of peoples and mores. This vision stemmed from his ground-breaking dissection of thousands of mummies in Egypt during the great excavations of the 1900s. His speculations, made in association with thinkers such as W H R Rivers and W J Perry, bore fruit in a spate of publications that sparked global debate, arousing particular anger from American ethnologists opposed to ideas of foreign influence upon Mesoamerican cultures. Elliot Smith's ideas were regarded at the time as authentic, if problematic, approaches to important issues in human history. They were subsequently to be caricatured or ignored in anthropological and archaeological disciplines that had moved on to other paradigms. Paul Crook shows how his ideas were developed in the context of his life and times, examining the debates they aroused, his attempts to incorporate anthropology within a broader interdisciplinary school under his leadership in London, and his opposition to Nazi race theory in the 1930s. There has been no full-scale biography of Elliot Smith and little of substance analysing his works. Despite shortcomings, his theory and reputation deserve rehabilitation. An Afterword brings general readers up to date about the whole "diffusion" debate.

In this richly illustrated book, renowned archaeologist Donald Redford draws on the latest discoveries--including many of his own--to tell the story of the ancient Egyptian city of Mendes, home of the mysterious cult of the "fornicating ram who mounts the beauties." Excavation by Redford and his colleagues over the past two decades has cast a flood of light on this strange center of worship and political power located in the Nile Delta. A sweeping chronological account filled with photographs, drawings, and informative sidebars, "City of the Ram-Man" is the first history of Mendes written for general readers.

Founded in the remote prehistoric past, inhabited continuously for 5,000 years, and abandoned only in the first-century BC, Mendes is a microcosm of ancient Egyptian history. "City of the Ram-Man" tells the city's full story--from its founding, through its development of a great society and its brief period as the capital of Egypt, up to its final decline. Central to the story is millennia of worship dedicated to the lascivious ram-god. The book describes the discoveries of the great temple of the ram and the "Mansion of the Rams," where the embalmed bodies of the avatars of the god were buried. It also discusses ancient Greek reports that these ram-gods occasionally ritually fornicated with women.

Vividly written and informed throughout by Redford's intimate knowledge of the remains of Mendes, "City of the Ram-Man" is a unique account of a long-lost monument of Egyptian history, religion, and culture.

Eight years ago, Jean-Pierre Houdin, a successful French architect, became obsessed by the age-old mystery of how the Great Pyramid was built. He renounced his architectural practice, sold his Paris apartment, and for ten hours a day labored at his computer to create exquisitely detailed 3-D models of the interior of the Great Pyramid. After five years of effort, the images rotating on his computer screen provided irrefutable evidence of an astonishing secret. Corkscrewing up the inside of the Great Pyramid is a mile-long ramp, unseen for 4,500 years. The pyramid was built from the inside. The revelation casts a fresh light on the minds that founded earth's first civilization. The narration takes place in two time frames: ancient and modern. The ancient story explains how a nation of farmers that had only recently emerged from the Stone Age could construct one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. To execute something as complex and massive as the Great Pyramid, Egypt needed architects, mathematicians, boat builders, stone masons, metallurgists. It took twenty years to build the Great Pyramid. By the time its capstone was laid in 2560 BC, the innovations born of the building quest had transformed agrarian Egypt into the world's most modern, most powerful nation. As we follow the progress of Hemienu, the innovative architect who planned, organized and oversaw construction of the Great Pyramid, we also follow Houdin working to discover how and why the ancient architect designed the pyramid as he did. Houdin works as a 'forensic' architect, aiming to reconstruct the lessons Hemienu had learned from construction of three previous pyramids and to visualise his blueprint for the massive stone building.

Tomb Families investigates the apparently random distribution of New Kingdom private tombs in the Theban Necropolis by focusing on factors which may have influenced tomb location. The Theban Necropolis contains hundreds of tombs belonging to elite individuals, dating from the end of the Old Kingdom through to the Ptolemaic Period, with the vast majority dating to the New Kingdom (c.1550-1077 BC). These tombs are scattered across the landscape at the edge of the desert between the Valley of the Kings to the west, and the row of royal mortuary temples along the edge of the cultivation to the east. GPS surveying has enabled the spatial analysis of these tombs, demonstrating that specific areas of the necropolis were popular at different times and among particular groups of people. Clusters and patterns can be identified between tombs built during the same reign(s), as well as between tomb owners with similar titles and familial connections. The orientation of specific tombs towards Karnak temple, royal mortuary temples and festival processional routes reveals their significance to certain individuals. This research provides a deeper understanding of the necropolis, and how private tombs linked to the wider sacred landscape of Thebes.

Of all the enormous monuments throughout Egypt and Nubia that Ramesses II (the Great; ca. 1279-1212 BCE) left behind, his temple at Abydos, built early in his reign, stands as one of his most elegant monuments, with its simple architectural layout and dramatic and graceful painted relief scenes. Though best known for its dramatic reliefs depicting the battle of Kadesh, the temple also offers a wealth of information about religious and social life in ancient Egypt. It reflects, for example, the strenuous efforts of the early Ramessides to reestablish the Osiris cult in Egypt-and particularly at Abydos-in the aftermath of the Amarna period. Over a seven-year period, the authors of The Temple of Ramesses II in Abydos conducted a field project with the aim of producing an up-to-date and comprehensive architectural, photographic, and epigraphic record of the temple. The result is a masterpiece of modern epigraphic research and publication.This volume - Volume 2, Pillars, Niches and Miscellaea - is the second of two volumes documenting their results. It presents more than two hundred illustrations including detailed line drawings - accurately rendered according to modern epigraphical standards - of elements of the temple as well as translations of the inscriptions found in the temple. .

Until comparatively recently, there has been little attempt to produce a detailed study of the architectural make-up of multi-roomed mastaba tombs and the implications of these observations for understanding the ways in which this type of tomb was really used. No thorough and comprehensive investigation has ever been dedicated to the building techniques, materials and design of mastabas or, indeed, who built them. The Architecture of Mastaba Tombs considers the architectural components of tomb design that made an ideal burial and explores different aspects of the design and construction of mastabas in the late Old Kingdom (c. 2375 - 2181 BC). It focuses on a group of multi-roomed mastabas in the Unas Cemetery at Saqqara that can be characterised by their complex design and large size. This includes an appraisal of tombs within this cemetery and examines the layout and development of the cemetery from the reign of King Unas, at the end of the 5th Dynasty. Specific attention is paid to the techniques that were used to build tombs via the recording of masonry and examination of specific architectural elements within different monuments. Features such as doorways and the security of the tomb and other aspects, for example the provision of storage space for the maintenance of the mortuary cult, are all considered. The study utilises published sources and survey work carried out by the author. Finally, this study addresses the imbalance of data collection within the recording of Old Kingdom mastabas.

In 1937 the Colt Archaeological Expedition, excavating the ancient site of modern Auja Hafir in the Negeb, uncovered two storerooms containing the hoard of Greek papyrus documents of the 6th and 7th centuries. These non-literary papyri contain military, church, and family records, as well as an Arab archive on the caravan industry. Originally published in 1958. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom offers a new history of the field of Egyptian monastic archaeology. It is the first study in English to trace how scholars identified a space or site as monastic within the Egyptian landscape and how such identifications impacted perceptions of monasticism. Brooks Hedstrom then provides an ecohistory of Egypt's tripartite landscape to offer a reorientation of the perception of the physical landscape. She analyzes late-antique documentary evidence, early monastic literature, and ecclesiastical history before turning to the extensive archaeological evidence of Christian monastic settlements. In doing so, she illustrates the stark differences between idealized monastic landscape and the actual monastic landscape that was urbanized through monastic constructions. Drawing upon critical theories in landscape studies, materiality and phenomenology, Brooks Hedstrom looks at domestic settlements of non-monastic and monastic settlements to posit what features makes monastic settlements unique, thus offering a new history of monasticism in Egypt.

This catalogue for an exhibit at Chicago's Oriental Institute Museum presents the newest research on the Predynastic and Early Dynastic Periods in a lavishly illustrated format. Essays on the rise of the state, contact with the Levant and Nubia, crafts, writing, iconography and evidence from Abydos, Tell el-Farkha, Hierakonpolis and the Delta were contributed by leading scholars in the field. The catalogue features 129 Predynastic and Early Dynastic objects, most from the Oriental Institute's collection, that illustrate the environmental setting, Predynastic and Early Dynastic culture, religion and the royal burials at Abydos. This volume will be a standard reference and a staple for classroom use.

Sometime in the early fourth century bc, an unknown Egyptian master carved an exquisite portrait in dark-green stone. The statue that included this remarkably lifelike head of a priest, who was likely a citizen of ancient Memphis, may have been damaged when the Persians conquered Egypt in 343 bc before it was ritually buried in a temple complex dedicated to the worship of the sacred Apis bull. Its adventures were not over, though: after almost two millennia, the head was excavated by August Mariette, a founding figure in French Egyptology, under a permit from the Ottoman Pasha. Returned to France as part of a collection of antiquities assembled for the inimitable Bonaparte prince known as Plon-Plon, it found a home in his faux Pompeian palace. After disappearing again, it resurfaced in the personal collection of Edward Perry Warren, a turn-of-the-twentieth-century American aesthete, who sold it to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Along the way, this compelling and mysterious sculpture, known worldwide as the Boston Green Head, has reflected the West's evolving understanding of Egyptian art - from initial assertions that it was too refined to be the product of a lesser civilization, to recognition of the sophistication of the culture that produced it.

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.

This volume is the first of a series on the ceramics from the Egypt Exploration Society's excavations in the Anubieion at Saqqara. The desert edge overlooking the Nile Valley was intensively used for two and a half millenia before its selection as the site of the mainly Ptolemaic temple. Mastaba tombs, pyramids and their associated temples, densely packed shaft tombs and a Late Dynastic cemetery came and went, many leaving evidence of former magnificence, while invisible beneath shifting sands lies fragmentary testimony to the kings, queens, nobles and commoners buried here and the priestly communities who ministered to their needs in the afterlife. Two volumes have described the surviving structures and the large and small objects found and analysed in the area's complex stratigraphy; the present volume adds the evidence of that most prolific of ancient artefacts, the pottery, for the whole period from the first use of the area until the eighth century BC. Published and some unpublished parallels from Saqqara itself, from the city of Memphis, where most of those buried here lived and died, and from further afield, place each type in its geographical and chronological context to trace the evolution of the ceramic repertoire in the Saqqara/ Memphis area through the major periods of ancient Egyptian history.

This volume features all the graffiti from the Baboon and Falcon galleries at the Sacred Animal Necropolis, North Saqqara, excavated by the Egypt Exploration Society by Bryan Emery between 1966 and 1971. The graffiti include dedications to the god Imhotep with an important historical content, and masons' marks which show some of the construction history of the galleries. There is also a Greek graffito listing the contents of dreams or visions, and a series of dedications on bronze temple furniture which mention a hitherto unknown god. Jars with hieroglyphic signs shed light on one of the main characters found in the Greek Hermetic literature, and a selection of ostraca give insights into the management of the animal cults.

This Festschrift contains current research about the symbolism of hieroglyphs, religious texts, depictions and graffiti from the royal tomb KV 11 and museum objects from Leyden, Chicago, Cambridge, Paris and Berlin. It covers i.a. the virtual reunion of the sarcophagus of Ramesses III and of a statue of Ramesses VI. This Festschrift in honour of Willem Hovestreydt contains 13 articles on current research, mainly focusing on the Egyptian New Kingdom. The honoured one and several contributors work on a project recording the tomb of Ramses III. Therefore several articles focus on the symbolism of hieroglyphs, religious texts, depictions and graffiti from the royal tomb KV 11 (the burial place of king Ramses III in the Valley of the Kings) . Further contributions include discussions on museum objects from Leiden, Chicago, Cambridge, Paris and Berlin. There is a virtual reunion of the sarcophagus of Ramesses III and of a statue of Ramesses VI. Other studies focus in the sun sign in hieroglyphic script, a discussion of the word 'fox' in ancient Egyptian, as well as as new look at the relief of Merymery now in Leiden.

As reflected in the title From Microcosm to Macrocosm: Individual households and cities in Ancient Egypt and Nubia, both a micro-approach introducing microhistories of individual sites according to recent archaeological fieldwork incorporating interdisciplinary methods as well as general patterns and regional developments in Northeast Africa are discussed. This combination of research questions on the micro-level with the macro-level provides new information about cities and households in Ancient Egypt and Nubia and makes the book unique. Architectural studies as well as analyses of material culture and the new application of microarchaeology, here especially of micromorphology and archaeometric applications, are presented as case studies from sites primarily dating to the New Kingdom (Second Millennium BC). The rich potential of well-preserved but still not completely explored sites in modern Sudan, especially as direct comparison for already excavated sites located in Egypt, is in particular emphasised in the book. Settlement archaeology in Egypt and Nubia has recently moved away from a strong textual approach and generalised studies to a more site-specific approach and household studies. This new bottom-up approach applied by current fieldwork projects is demonstrated in the book. The volume is intended for all specialists at settlements sites in Northeast Africa, for students of Egyptology and Nubian Studies, but it will be of interest to anyone working in the field of settlement archaeology. It is the result of a conference on the same subject held in 2017 as the closing event of the European Research Council funded project AcrossBorders at Munich.

The book presents the discoveries made by the Polish archaeological mission in Saqqara, the central part of the largest ancient Egyptian royal necropolis. The area adjacent to the Pyramid of King Djoser on the monument's west side, so far neglected by archaeologists, turned out to be an important burial place of the Egyptian nobility from two periods of Pharaonic history: the Old Kingdom (the late third millennium BC) and the Ptolemaic Period (the late first millennium BC). The earlier, lower cemetery yielded rock-hewn tombs with splendid wall decoration in relief and painting. The book also describes methods of conservation applied to the discovered artefacts and episodes from the mission's life.

In this book, Bob Becking provides a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of the origins, lives, and eventual fate of the Yehudites, or Judeans, at Elephantine, framed within the greater history of the rise and fall of the Persian Empire. The Yehudites were among those mercenaries recruited by the Persians to defend the southwestern border of the empire in the fifth century BCE. Becking argues that this group, whom some label as the first "Jews," lived on the island of Elephantine in relative peace with other ethnic groups under the aegis of the pax persica. Drawing on Aramaic and Demotic texts discovered during excavations on the island and at Syene on the adjacent shore of the Nile, Becking finds evidence of intermarriage, trade cooperation, and even a limited acceptance of one another's gods between the various ethnic groups at Elephantine. His analysis of the Elephantine Yehudites' unorthodox form of Yahwism provides valuable insight into the group's religious beliefs and practices. An important contribution to the study of Yehudite life in the diaspora, this accessibly written and sweeping history enhances our understanding of the varieties of early Jewish life and how these contributed to the construction of Judaism.

This book presents a new analysis of the organization, structure and changes of the pharaonic state through three millennia of its history. Moreno Garcia sheds new light on this topic by bringing to bear recent developments in state theory and archaeology, especially comparative study of the structure of ancient states and empires. The role played by pharaonic Egypt in new studies often reiterates old views about the stability, conservatism and 'exceptionalism' of Egyptian kingship, which supposedly remained the same across the Bronze and Iron Ages. Ancient Egypt shared many parallels with other Bronze and Iron Age societies as can be shown by an analysis of the structure of the state, of the limits of royal power, of the authority of local but neglected micro-powers (such as provincial potentates and wealthy non-elite), and of the circulation and control of wealth. Furthermore, Egypt experienced deep changes in its social, economic, political and territorial organization during its history, thus making the land of the pharaohs an ideal arena in which to test applications of models of governments and to define the dynamics that rule societies on the longue duree. When seen through these new perspectives, the pharaonic monarchies appear less exceptional than previously thought, and more dependent on the balance of power, on their capacity to control the kingdom's resources and on the changing geopolitical conditions of their time.

The Journal of the Canadian Society for Coptic Studies(JCSCS) is published annually on behalf of the Canadian Society for Coptic Studies by Lockwood Press. The Canadian Society for Coptic Studies is a Toronto-based nonprofit organization whose purpose is to bring together individuals interested in Coptic studies and to promote the dissemination of scholarly information on Coptic Studies through the organization of meetings and conferences and through the preparation of scholarly works for publication.

The emergence of the cult of Osiris is, in most cases, dated to the end of the 5th dynasty, the period in which the name of Osiris appears in writing, and it is commonly held that before this period not a trace of the cult can be discerned. This study is intended to investigate whether this emergence was really so sudden, or if there is evidence to suggest this appearance was preceded by a period of development of the theology and mythology of the cult. One of the most important aspects of the mythology of the cult is the rebirth of Osiris. In the theology of the cult this rebirth was projected on mortal men, and led to the postulation that every human being, whether royal or non-royal, had the possibility to attain eternal life after death. What made this cult even more attractive is that this eternal life was not confined to the tomb, as it used to be for non-royalty. The study is concerned with the rebirth possibilities of non-royal persons and aims to determine the chronological development of the rebirth connotations of the various decoration themes that were used in the chapel of Old Kingdom tombs. The decoration themes that are the subject of the determinations are the group of bed-scenes consisting of the bed-making scene and the marital bed-scene, the development in form and length of the bread loaves on the offering table, the different aspects of the scenes in which the "lotus" flower is depicted, and the marsh scenes.

The modern view of the ancient Egyptian world is often through the lens of a scribe: the trained, schooled, literate individual who was present at many levels of Egyptian society, from a local accountant to the highest echelons of society. And yet, despite the wealth of information the scribes left us, we know relatively little about what underpinned their world, about their mentality and about their everyday life. Ancient Egyptian Scribes examines how these figures kept both the administrative life and cultural memory of Egypt running. These are the Egyptians who ran the state and formed the supposedly meritocratic system of local administration and government. Case studies look at accountants, draughtsmen, scribes with military and dynastic roles, the authors of graffiti and literati who interacted in different ways with Pharaohs and other leaders. Assuming no previous knowledge of ancient Egypt, and ensuring accessibility for students and non-specialists, the various roles and identities of the scribes are presented in a way that offers structured information on their cultural identity and self-presentation, and provides readers with an insight into the making of Egyptian written culture.

Religion in the ancient world, and ancient Egyptian religion in particular, is often perceived as static, hierarchically organised, and centred on priests, tombs, and temples. Engagement with archaeological and textual evidence dispels these beguiling if superficial narratives, however. Individuals and groups continuously shaped their environments, and were shaped by them in turn. This volume explores the ways in which this adaptation, negotiation, and reconstruction of religious understandings took place. The material results of these processes are termed 'cultural geography'. The volume examines this 'cultural geography' through the study of three vectors of religious agency: religious practices, the transmission of texts and images, and the study of religious landscapes. Bringing together papers by experts in a variety of Egyptological disciplines and other fields of study, this volume presents the results of an interdisciplinary workshop held at the University of Leiden, 7-9 November 2018, kindly funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) Vidi Talent Scheme. The 16 papers presented here discuss the archaeology of religion and religious practices, landscape archaeology and 'cultural geography', and the transmission and adaptation of texts and images, across not only the history of Egypt from the Early Dynastic to the Christian periods, but also in ancient Sudanese archaeology, the Arabian peninsula, early and medieval south-eastern Asia, and contemporary China.

This is the only substantial and up-to-date reference work on the Ptolemaic army. Employing Greek and Egyptian papyri and inscriptions, and building on approaches developed in state-formation theory, it offers a coherent account of how the changing structures of the army in Egypt after Alexander's conquest led to the development of an ethnically more integrated society. A new tripartite division of Ptolemaic history challenges the idea of gradual decline, and emphasizes the reshaping of military structures that took place between c.220 and c.160 BC in response to changes in the nature of warfare, mobilization and demobilization, and financial constraints. An investigation of the socio-economic role played by soldiers permits a reassessment of the cleruchic system and shows how soldiers' associations generated interethnic group solidarity. By integrating Egyptian evidence, Christelle Fischer-Bovet also demonstrates that the connection between the army and local temples offered new ways for Greeks and Egyptians to interact.

The Great Oasis of Egypt provides the first full study of the Dakhla and Kharga Oases in antiquity, written by participants in several of the current archaeological projects in this region. The oases were closely tied to Egypt and to each other, but not always easy to control, and their agricultural productivity varied with climatic conditions. The book discusses the oases' geology, water resources, history, administration, economy, trade connections, taxation, urbanism, religion, burial practices, literary culture, and art. New evidence for human health and illness from the cemeteries is presented along with a synthesis on the use of different types of cloth in burial. A particular emphasis is placed on pottery, with its ability to tell us both about how people lived and how far imports and exports can be seen from the shapes and fabrics, and both literature and art suggest full participation in the culture of Greco-Roman Egypt.