Osiris, god of the dead, was one of ancient Egypt's most important deities. The earliest secure evidence for belief in him dates back to the fifth dynasty (c.2494-2345BC), but he continued to be worshipped until the fifth century AD. Following Osiris is concerned with ancient Egyptian conceptions of the relationship between Osiris and the deceased, or what might be called the Osirian afterlife, asking what the nature of this relationship was and what the prerequisites were for enjoying its benefits. It does not seek to provide a continuous or comprehensive account of Egyptian ideas on this subject, but rather focuses on five distinct periods in their development, spread over four millennia. The periods in question are ones in which significant changes in Egyptian ideas about Osiris and the dead are known to have occurred or where it has been argued that they did, as Egyptian aspirations for the Osirian afterlife took time to coalesce and reach their fullest form of expression. An important aim of the book is to investigate when and why such changes happened, treating religious belief as a dynamic rather than a static phenomenon and tracing the key stages in the development of these aspirations, from their origin to their demise, while illustrating how they are reflected in the textual and archaeological records. In doing so, it opens up broader issues for exploration and draws meaningful cross-cultural comparisons to ask, for instance, how different societies regard death and the dead, why people convert from one religion to another, and why they abandon belief in a god or gods altogether.

Broadening Horizons is an international congress dedicated to postgraduate students and early-stage researchers working with disciplines in the area of Ancient Near East and Eastern Mediterranean studies. With Broadening Horizons 4 the thematic areas were broadened, opening the congress up to the Central Asia studies. The conference was hosted at Universita degli Studi di Torino, from the 25th to the 28th of October 2011. Broadening Horizons 4 was a huge success. A total of seventy-four participants from fifteen countries attended the congress, making it the most successful edition. This volume includes most of papers presented at the congress and the key lecture by St John Simpson. The volume has been arranged according to the sessions: settlement patterns and exchange networks; socio-economic reconstruction of ancient societies based on archaeological, historical or environmental records; application of new technologies in archaeological research; impact of human dynamics on landscape evolution; exploitation of the natural environment and sustenance strategies; and posters. Anyone with an interest in the Ancient Near East, Eastern Mediterranean and Central Asia studies will find much to enjoy and appreciate in this volume.

The term canonicity implies the recognition that the domain of literature and of the library is also a cultural and political one, related to various forms of identity formation, maintenance, and change. Scribes and benefactors create canon in as much as they teach, analyse, preserve, promulgate and change canonical texts according to prevailing norms. From early on, texts from the written traditions of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt were accumulated, codified, and to some extent canonised, as various collections developed mainly in the environment of the temple and the palace. These written traditions represent sets of formal and informal cultures that all speak in their own ways of canonicity, normativity, and other forms of cultural expertise. Some forms of literature were used not only in scholarly contexts, but also in political ones, and they served purposes of identity formation. This volume addresses the interrelations between various forms of canon and identity formation in different time periods, genres, regions, and contexts, as well as the application of contemporary conceptions of canon to ancient texts.

In Ancient Egyptian Phonology. James Allen studies the sounds of the language spoken by the ancient Egyptians through application of the most recent methodological advances for phonological reconstruction. Using the internal evidence of the language, he proceeds from individual vowels and consonants to the sound of actual ancient Egyptian texts. Allen also explores variants, alternants, and the development of sound in texts, and touches on external evidence from Afroasiatic cognate languages. The most up to date work on this topic, Ancient Egyptian Phonology is an essential resource for Egyptologists and will also be of interest to scholars and linguists of African and Semitic languages.

The rich history of Egypt has provided famous examples of board games played in antiquity. Each of these games provides evidence of contact between Egypt and its neighbours. From pre-dynastic rule to Arab and Ottoman invasions, Egypt's past is visible on game boards. This volume starts by introducing the reader to board games as well as instruments of chance and goes on to trace the history and distribution of ancient Egyptian games, looking particularly at how they show contact with other cultures and civilizations. Game practices, which were also part of Egyptian rituals and divination, travelled throughout the eastern Mediterranean. This book explores the role of Egypt in accepting and disseminating games during its long history. Over the last few years, the extent and the modes of contact have become better understood through museum and archival research projects as well as surveys of archaeological sites in Egypt and its surrounding regions. The results allow new insight into ancient Egypt's international relations and the role of board games research in understanding its extent. Written by three authors known internationally for their expertise on this topic, this will be the first volume on Ancient Egyptian games of its kind and a much-needed contribution to the field of both Egyptology and board games studies.

The aim of this book is to approach Ptolemaic and Imperial royal sculpture in Egypt dating between 300 BC and AD 220 (the reigns of Ptolemy I and Caracalla) from a contextual point of view. To collect together the statuary items (recognised as statues, statue heads and fragments, and inscribed bases and plinths) that are identifiably royal and have a secure archaeological context, that is a secure find spot or a recoverable provenance, within Egypt. This material was used, alongside other types of evidence such as textual sources and numismatic material, to consider the distribution, style, placement, and functions of the royal statues, and to answer the primary questions: where were these statues located? What was the relationship between statue, especially statue style, and placement? And what changes can be identified between Ptolemaic and Imperial royal sculpture? From analysis of the sculptural evidence, this book was able to create a catalogue of 103 entries composed of 157 statuary items, and use this to identify the different styles of royal statues that existed in Ptolemaic and Imperial Egypt and the primary spaces for the placement of such imagery, namely religious and urban space. The results, based on the available evidence, was the identification of a division between sculptural style and context regarding the royal statues, with Egyptian-style material being placed in Egyptian contexts, Greek-style material in Greek, and Imperial-style statues associated with classical contexts. The functions of the statues appear to have also typically been closely related to statue style and placement. Many of the statues were often directly associated with their location, meaning they were an intrinsic part of the function and appearance of the context they occupied, as well as acting as representations of the monarchs. Primarily, the royal statues acted as a way to establish and maintain communication between different groups in Egypt.

William John Bankes (1786-1855) was a pioneer in the nascent study of the language, history, and civilization of ancient Egypt. At the Abydos Temple he discovered the King List - a wall of cartouches listing Egyptian kings in chronological order - which was vital to the decoding of Egyptian hieroglyphs. At Philae he uncovered a fallen obelisk, which he arranged to be transported back to England. And in modern-day Jordan he was the first European to make sketches and site plans of the "lost" city of Petra. Bankes's life was rich and full, and his discoveries have proven to be quite valuable and influential. But, living in an era when homosexuality was a capital offense, he was persecuted for being gay and threatened with imprisonment and execution. His decision to travel and pursue his love of art and architecture went against his father's wishes that he follow in his footsteps and become a politician. Despite such obstacles, Bankes's pioneering work on ancient temples and artifacts now enriches the knowledge of modern Egyptologists, and his art collection and decorative talents can be enjoyed by those who visit his home, a National Trust estate - with the obelisk from Philae still raised on the south lawn. Enhanced by many of Bankes's drawings and paintings, this engaging story is full of vivid detail about the beginnings of Egyptology, Regency England, and a fascinating individual, and it sets the record straight about Bankes's crucial role in setting the stage for the work of later scholars.

Pen, Stylus, and Chisel: An Ancient Egypt Sourcebook helps students understand the world of the ancient Egyptians by introducing them to primary sources that cover a broader spectrum, both temporally and geographically, than most ancient Egyptian readers. Beginning with The Old Kingdom in the third millennium BCE, the book covers 3,000 years of history, progressing through the Middle Kingdom, New Kingdom, Late Kingdom, Persian Period, and ending with the Ptolemaic Dynasty in the first century BCE. Students will learn about the Egyptians' political ideas, social customs, religious views, economy, ethics, and forms of expression. The material includes documents written both by the Egyptians and by those who observed them, which gives students a well-rounded view of the Egyptian people, their history, and their culture. The book includes maps, introductions to the readings to place them in context and enhance comprehension, discussion questions to be used in class or as writing assignments, and a glossary. Pen, Stylus, and Chisel can be used in history and humanities courses on ancient Egypt.

This volume is the last to be printed in a series describing in detail the results of the so-called West Bank Survey, an archaeological survey in the northernmost part of Sudanese Nubia, undertaken on the West Bank between the villages of Faras in the north and Gemai in the south during the period 1960-64. This project was carried out in anticipation of the flooding of the Aswan High Dam. The whole series has been divided into three volumes, no. 2 including sites from the Meroitic and Ballana periods (BAR S1335: Adams 2004), no. 3 including sites of the Christian age (BAR S1421: Adams 2005), while the present volume, no. 1, consists of detailed descriptions of sites and finds of the Early Nubian, Middle Nubian and Pharaonic New Kingdom periods.

Between the Roman annexation of Egypt and the Arab period, the Nile Delta went from consisting of seven branches to two, namely the current Rosetta and Damietta branches. For historians, this may look like a slow process, but on a geomorphological scale, it is a rather fast one. How did it happen? How did human action contribute to the phenomenon? Why did it start around the Roman period? And how did it impact on ancient Deltaic communities? This volume reflects on these questions by focusing on a district of the north-eastern Delta called the Mendesian Nome. The Mendesian Nome is one of the very few Deltaic zones documented by a significant number of papyri. To date, this documentation has never been subject to a comprehensive study. Yet it provides us with a wealth of information on the region's landscape, administrative geography, and agrarian economy. Starting from these papyri and from all available evidence, this volume investigates the complex networks of relationships between Mendesian environments, socio-economic dynamics, and agro-fiscal policies. Ultimately, it poses the question of the 'otherness' of the Nile Delta, within Egypt and, more broadly, the Roman Empire. Section I sets the broader hydrological, documentary, and historical contexts from which the Roman-period Mendesian evidence stem. Section II is dedicated to the reconstruction of the Mendesian landscape, while section III examines the strategies of diversification and the modes of valorization of marginal land attested in the nome. Finally, section IV analyses the socio-environmental crisis that affected the nome in the second half of the second century AD.

Cultural Expression in the Old Kingdom Elite Tomb considers the material and immaterial culture left behind by the ancient Egyptian elite in their tombs starting some 5000 years ago. The book intends to understand this culture reflecting the 'intention' of the ancient Egyptians. All these 'intentions' are now inaccessible to us, a paradox indeed. The author starts by examining the ways in which other Egyptologists have understood tomb culture over the past century. Two main clusters of thought dominate the history of this topic, the literal and/or the symbolic meaning. The literal is a popular approach for the modern world; the symbolic encompasses the ancient Egyptians' ideas about the meaning of life in this and the next world, and metaphysical perfection. The author uses a third mid-way course between the literal and the symbolic; i.e. an attempt to study the evidence in its reality and to search for common, universal factors which may be present and which may aid understanding. The result is an inventory, analysis and synthesis of the core components of Egyptian cultural dynamics as reflected in the iconographic evolution of Old Kingdom elite tombs. New horizons are opened up for describing and interpreting cultural data of many different levels (identity, ideology as social layers, and static versus dynamic as cultural mechanisms). The work goes beyond mainstream Egyptology, because the findings, apart from a specific Egyptian core, also have universal implications since comparison with other cultures shows comparable phenomena.

The subject of this study is an examination of the resources at the disposal of the elite class of Old Kingdom officials who administered the state on behalf of the crown. Their assets included one or more rural estates either owned outright or held in usufruct and/or enjoyed according to a land-owning system referred to as the pr Dt (estate), and all that the estate produced: a workforce if in some way bound to the estate, buildings, means of transport, household and personal effects.

First runner-up for the British-Kuwait Friendship Society Book Prize in Middle Eastern Studies 2015. In ancient Egypt, wrapping sacred objects, including mummified bodies, in layers of cloth was a ritual that lay at the core of Egyptian society. Yet in the modern world, attention has focused instead on unwrapping all the careful arrangements of linen textiles the Egyptians had put in place. This book breaks new ground by looking at the significance of textile wrappings in ancient Egypt, and at how their unwrapping has shaped the way we think about the Egyptian past. Wrapping mummified bodies and divine statues in linen reflected the cultural values attached to this textile, with implications for understanding gender, materiality and hierarchy in Egyptian society. Unwrapping mummies and statues similarly reflects the values attached to Egyptian antiquities in the West, where the colonial legacies of archaeology, Egyptology and racial science still influence how Egypt appears in museums and the press. From the tomb of Tutankhamun to the Arab Spring, Unwrapping Ancient Egypt raises critical questions about the deep-seated fascination with this culture - and what that fascination says about our own.

The present work is an attempt to give a comprehensive overview of turquoise and its role in Ancient Egypt. Turquoise was mined mainly in Sinai, at Maghara and at Serabit el Khadim, where the stone occurs in the sandstone rock. Ancient Egyptian mineralogical studies have neglected turquoise, focussing instead on the study of other minerals and metals such as gold, silver, and copper.

This study deals with the significance of ritual scenes on 21st Dynasty coffins. The images on these coffins are studied as texts referring to the passage of the deceased to the next life. The aim of this study is also to argue how the Middle Kingdom Coffin Texts were replaced at this later date by such images on coffins. The work focusses on a group of coffins belonging to the priest known as PA-dj-imn, and date to the reign of the High Priest Pinudjem II. They were found in 1891 at the tomb of Bab el-Gassus, as part of the find generally known as the Second Find of Deir el-Bahri.

This work examines one section of southern Karnak from the ancient Egyptian city of Thebes. Excavations at the site uncovered extensive remains from the late New Kingdom (12th-11th c. BCE), Third Intermediate Period (11th-7th c. BCE), and Late Period occupation of the area (7th-4th c. BCE). The research questions focused on determining the function of this section of the city and the nature of its relationship to the neighbouring Mut temple. A close study of the architectural and ceramic evidence traces the changing roles of the area through time, with special emphasis on a large-scale mud-brick building discovered at the site.

The study of furniture and its production is a window into both the social position of its owner and the techniques and social organization of the craftsmen. This book comprises an examination and analysis of chairs, stools and footstools of the New Kingdom (ca.1550-1069 B.C.) which are preserved in the Cairo Egyptian Museum. The first chapter is dedicated to woodworking processes and techniques of manufacturing chairs and stools. The second chapter analyses the chairs, stools, and fragments that constitute the main corpus of this study (131 pieces in total). The third chapter focuses primarily on two-dimensional scenes and how these can increase our understanding of the study objects. The fourth chapter is devoted to a lexicographical analysis of the terms used to designate different types of chairs, stools and footstools. This is followed by a typological study of chairs and stools in the New Kingdom based on actual pieces of furniture that my corpus includes and those preserved in other collections.

This fresh categorisation and examination grew from the author's innate curiosity about the shapes and forms of the ships and boats of the Ancient World and particularly of the Ancient Egyptians. Many years sailing and the book by Nancy Jenkins, "The Boat beneath the Pyramid" which considered the vessel buried alongside the Great Pyramid of Giza sparked this curiosity, and from this start point, the focus of the research moved to the catalogue of model vessels in the Cairo Museum collection, published by Reisner, and the surviving hulls from Dahshur. These sources were augmented and supported by the work by Boreux. Finds such as the timbers from Lisht added valuable information. An interest in the greater variety of vessels to be known from the Old and Middle Kingdoms concentrated the researcher's attention upon the craft of these periods. Three fragmentary examples of hull forms, supposedly not known until the Old Kingdom, have been included, as the categorization system proposed in this research attempts to push back the previously accepted dates of some Egyptian hull shapes.

A collection of papers in honour of Eyptologist Ulrich Luft. Contents: 1) The Greek subliterary texts and the Demotic literature (Adrienn Almasy); 2) Die drei Kartuschen im Naoseingang (Edith Bernhauer); 3) Eine archaisierende Konigsfigur der spaten Libyerzeit (Helmut Brandl) 4) A Phantom Debate ? (Edward Brovarski); 5) Inscriptions of the high priest Pinudjem I on the walls of the Eighteenth Dynasty Temple at Medinet Habu (Gabriella Dembitz); 6) News from Old Kingdom Thebes (Zoltan Imre Fabian); 7) Who was Sinuhe? (Hans Goedicke); 8) Memphis in der fruhen 6. Dynastie als Fallbeispiel agyptologischer Residenzenforschung (Rolf Gundlach); 9) Massbezeichnungen auf koptischen Papyri und Ostraka (Monika Hasitzka); 10) A Greek Coptic Glossary Found at TT65 (Andrea Hasznos); 11) Zum koptischen Alphabet des Bernhard von Breydenbach (1486) (Balazs J. Irsay-Nagy); 12) Die Naoi und die Kulttopographie von Saft el-Henneh (Dieter Kessler); 13) The protagonist-catalogues of the apocryphal acts of Apostles in the Coptic Manichaica a re-assessment of the evidence (Gabor Kosa); 14) Feudalisms of Egyptology (Katalin Anna Kothay); 15) Der Sennefer Brief, Berlin P 10463 die Lesung des Papyrusmaterials (Myriam Krutzsch) 16) Shakespeares The Tempest and the Latin Asclepius (Ildiko Limpar); 17) From Middle Kingdom apotropaia to Netherworld Books (Eva Liptay); 18) Zu einer Formulierung in Totenbuch Kapitel (Alexander Manisali); 19) Les Proces. Un genre litteraire de lEgypte ancienne (Bernard Mathieu); 20) Vom schonen Erzahlen. Buchstablich fabelhafte Bilder (Ludwig D. Morenz); 21) Die administrativen Texte der Berliner Lederhandschrift (Matthias Muller); 22) Letters from Gurna. The mix-and-match game of an excavation (Bori Nemeth); 23) Zum Tempel des Amonre Der die Bitte hort in Karnak (Jurgen Osing); 24) The forms of the shadow: The birth-stories of the first archon in the ancient Gnostic texts from Nag Hammadi (Csaba Otvos); 25) Elkasai (Monika Pesthy-Simon); 26) Foreign groups at Lahun during the late Middle Kingdom (Mate Petrik); 27) Geschlechtsidentitatsstorungen im altagyptischen Pantheon? Einige Bemerkungen zum Phanomen wechselnder Genuskorrelationen von Gotternamen (Andreas H. Pries); 28) Eine agyptische Bezeichnung der Perle? (Joachim Friedrich Quack); 29) The domestic servant of the palace rn-snb (Helmut Satzinger and Danijela Stefanovic); 30) An Early Stela of the High Priest Amenhotep of the 20th Dynasty? (Julia Schmied); 31) The Burial Shaft of the Tomb of Amenhotep, Overseer of the First Phyle Theban Tomb No. -64- (Gabor Schreiber); 32) The Epistolary topos and War (Anthony Spalinger); 33) He did its Like: Some Uses of Repetition in Demotic Narrative Fiction (John Tait); 34) Aegyptio-Afroasiatica XXIV(Gabor Takacs); 35) The Demons of the Air and the Water of the Nile. Saint Anthony the Great on the Reason of the Inundation (Peter Toth); 36) Der gottliche Ramses II. im Grossen Tempel von Abu Simbel (Martina Ullmann); 37) Excavation in the Tomb of Piay in Dra Abu el Naga (TT 344) (Zsuzsanna Vanek); 38) Deux etiquettes de momie) (Edith Varga); 39) One seal and two sealings of the Fifth Dynasty and their historical implications (Miroslav Verner); 40) Zur Homonymie in den Kxoe-Varietaten des Zentralkhoisan (Rainer Vossen); 41) Ein Sphinxkopf aus der 12. Dynastie (Munchen AS 7110) (Gabriele Wenzel); 42) Eine ptolemaische Abrechung uber inneragyptischen Finanzausgleich. (P. Fitzhugh D.4 + P. Wangstedt 7) (Karl-Theodor Zauzich).

In Pottery and Economy in Old Kingdom Egypt, Leslie Anne Warden investigates the economic importance of utilitarian ceramics, particularly beer jars and bread moulds, in third millennium BC Egypt. The Egyptian economy at this period is frequently presented as state-centric or state-defined. This study forwards new methodology for a bottom-up approach to Egyptian economy, analyzing economic relationships through careful analysis of variation within the utilitarian wares which formed the basis of much economic exchange in the period. Beer jars and bread moulds, together with their archaeological, textual, and iconographic contexts, thus yield a framework for the economy which is fluid, agent-based, and defined by small scale, face-to-face relationships rather than the state.

Papers from an international Egyptological conference entitled Evolving Egypt: Innovation, Appropriation, and Reinterpretation in Ancient Egypt held in February 2006 at BYU-Hawaii (Oahu). Contents: 1) Possibilities and Pitfalls in Identifying Innovation: The Early Ramesside Era as a Case Study (Kerry Muhlestein); 2) Les bateaux et le sacre dans l'ancienne Egypte (Ana Maria Rosso); 3) Symbolic Connotations of Pyramid Temples in the 5th and 6th Dynasties (Pal Steiner); 4) Dating of Stelae of the 12th Dynasty: A Statistical Approach (Des Bright); 5) The Expansionist Policies of the New Kingdom and the Increase in Craft Specialization in the Textile Industry (Giovanni Tata); 6) Copy and Reinterpretation in the Tomb of Nakht: Ancient Egyptian Hermeneutics (Valerie Angenot); 7) The Daily Cult: Space, Continuity and Change (Robyn Gillam); 8) Glossed Over: Ancient Egyptian Interpretations of Their Religion (John Gee); 9) The Hieratic Scribal Tradition in Preexilic Judah (David Calabro); 10) Ptolemaic Translation and Representation: The Hellenistic Sculptural Program of the Memphite Sarapieion (Shanna Kennedy-Quigley); 11) Appropriation of Egyptian Judgment in the Testament of Abraham? (Jared Ludlow); 12 New Evidence of Coptic Mummification Techniques From Tell El-Hibeh, Middle Egypt (Robert M. Yohe II, Jill K. Gardner, and Deanna Heikkinen).