The name of Jean-Fran ois Champollion (1790 1832) will always be associated with the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs. Champollion himself was a child prodigy who had taught himself numerous ancient languages in his teenage years, despite not having received any formal education. In this 1824 work, he expands on the discoveries he had previously outlined in 1822, giving a long and systematic account of his research, which was based on the insight of Thomas Young that clusters of hieroglyphs on the tri-lingual Rosetta Stone could be matched to known Greek and Latin names. He gave phonetic values to the signs, and then linked them to the Coptic language (familiar from its use in the liturgy of the Coptic Christian Church in Egypt), which he recognised as being descended from ancient Egyptian. The work was originally published in two volumes (the second being of illustrations), which are here bound as one.

This biography of the Champollion brothers was published in Grenoble in 1887. Jean-Fran ois (1790 1832) was a child prodigy who had taught himself numerous ancient languages in his teenage years, despite not having received any formal education. Having become an assistant professor of history at Grenoble in his nineteenth year, Jean-Fran ois published a decipherment of the trilingual Rosetta Stone in 1824, thus offering the key to an understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphics and consequently of the civilisation of ancient Egypt. His older brother, Jacques-Joseph (1778 1867), although a less gifted scholar, supported Jean-Fran ois and kept his name and achievement before the public after his early death. Jacques-Joseph's son Aim -Louis (1813 94), the author of this biographical account, followed in his father's footsteps, becoming the librarian of the Biblioth que Royale and publishing works on palaeography. Based on original letters, this is the only near-contemporary biography of the pioneering Egyptologist.

This volume extends Breasted's remarkable documentary history through the reign of King Tutankhamun. By providing the first definitive transcription and the first English version of hundreds of historical records inscribed on papyrus or leather or carved in stone, Breasted gave unprecedented access to details of royal succession, military conquest, religious upheaval, administrative complexity, and other aspects of ancient Egyptian civilization. Originally published in the first decade of the twentieth century, his monumental work appears here in paperback for the first time. The Eighteenth Dynasty saw the consolidation of the cult of Amun and the expansion of the temple of Amun-Re at Karnak, as well as a religious revolution under King Akhenaten that involved abandoning Thebes as a religious capital and royal residence and founding a new city devoted to the service of the new solar god, Aten. Breasted presents records of the biography and coronation of Queen Hatshepsut, including reliefs that depict the queen's expedition to the land of Punt. Also in this volume are the annals of Thutmose III, providing the most complete account of the military achievements of any Egyptian king; scenes representing the supernatural birth and coronation by the gods of his son, Amenhotep II; and inscriptions from the tomb of Rekhmire, prime minister or vizier under Thutmose III, that include a listing of taxes paid to the temple and foreign tribute proceeding from the king's two decades of military activity in Asia. A herculean assemblage of primary documents, many of which have deteriorated to illegibility since its original publication, Ancient Records of Egypt illuminates both the incredible complexity of Egyptian society and the almost insuperable difficulties of reconstructing a lost civilization.

The Egyptian Museum of Florence, in collaboration with the University of Florence, hosted the Eleventh International Congress of Egyptologists which took place from 23rd to 30th August 2015, under the patronage of the IAE - International Association of Egyptologists. This volume publishes 136 papers and posters presented during the Congress. Topics discussed here range from archaeology, religion, philology, mummy investigations and archaeometry to history, offering an up-to-date account of research in these fields.

The Delta Survey Workshop comprises the proceedings of two conferences organised by the Delta Survey Project and held in Alexandria in 2017 and Mansoura in 2019. The 23 papers contain the results of the latest fieldwork in the Nile Delta and Sinai, from survey work that records and documents unknown and new sites such as Kom Dabaa and Mutubis or sites in Kafr Dawar and Wadi Tumilat, to excavation reports from established projects at major sites such as Qantir, Bubastis, Tell Heboua, Tell el-Maskhuta, Akademia, Taposiris Magna and Tell Fara'in (Buto). New work is also reported from Tell Tebilla, urban funerary sites in Alexandria, and Arab el Hisn (Heliopolis). There are also thematically focussed papers covering ovens recorded in archaeological and ethnological fieldwork, tower houses, amphorae and pottery and human remains. In addition, there are mapping and remote sensing reports from Mariut and the Buto area, rock inscriptions in Sinai and a catalogue project of material in the St Mark antiquities collection in Alexandria.

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.

Much of the literature on ancient Egypt centers on pharaohs or on elite conceptions of the afterlife. This scintillating book examines how ordinary ancient Egyptians lived their lives. Drawing on the remarkably rich and detailed archaeological, iconographic, and textual evidence from some 450 years of the New Kingdom, as well as recent theoretical innovations from several fields, it reconstructs private and social life from birth to death. The result is a meaningful portrait composed of individual biographies, communities, and landscapes.

Structured according to the cycles of life, the book relies on categories that the ancient Egyptians themselves used to make sense of their lives. Lynn Meskell gracefully sifts the evidence to reveal Egyptian domestic arrangements, social and family dynamics, sexuality, emotional experience, and attitudes toward the cadences of human life. She discusses how the Egyptians of the New Kingdom constituted and experienced self, kinship, life stages, reproduction, and social organization. And she examines their creation of communities and the material conditions in which they lived. Also included is neglected information on the formation of locality and the construction of gender and sexual identity and new evidence from the mortuary record, including important new data on the burial of children. Throughout, Meskell is careful to highlight differences among ancient Egyptians--the ways, for instance, that ethnicity, marital status, age, gender, and occupation patterned their experiences.

Readers will come away from this book with new insights on how life may have been experienced and conceived of by ancient Egyptians in all their variety. This makes Private Life in New Kingdom Egypt unique in Egyptology and fascinating to read.

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.

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.

This book seeks to explore the issues of production, use and importance of flint tools in the Archaic Period, known also as the Early Dynastic Period, and the Old Kingdom of Egypt, the epoch immediately following the unification of pre-state organisms of Upper and Lower Egypt into one political body. This volume provides an in-depth study of tools made of flint, which unceasingly fulfilled a major role in the period being considered. Flint, occurring in a number of varieties, substantially outnumbers other raw materials used for manufacturing tools, to wit: chalcedony, obsidian, quartzite, carnelian or rock crystal, all found in small or even minute amounts, which attests to their minor role in the first periods of Egyptian history. Notwithstanding a growing number of implements made of copper, then bronze, flint tools constituted an essential element of a broad-based culture, and not only material culture, in the Archaic Period, the Old Kingdom and beyond.

The reign of Tutankhamun was of major significance in the history of ancient Egypt. Following Howard Carter's discovery of the king's tomb in 1922, the story of the boy who became Pharaoh, died young and was buried in splendor at the height of Egyptian civilization captivated generations. But there exists a wide discrepancy between that saga and what scholarship has discovered in the last few decades about Tutankhamun's reign. A truer story is revealed, not by objects from his tomb, but by statuary, reliefs, paintings, and architecture from outside the Valley of the Kings. Marianne Eaton-Krauss, a leading authority on the boy king and the Amarna Period, guides readers through the recent findings of international research and the relevant documentation from a wide variety of sources, to create an accessible and comprehensive biography. Tracing Tutankhamun's life from birth to burial, she analyzes his parentage, his childhood as Prince Tutankhaten, his accession and change of name to Tutankhamun, his role in the restoration of the traditional cults and his own building projects, his death and burial, and the attitudes of his immediate successors to his reign. Illustrated with color and black-and-white images, the book includes extensive endnotes and selected bibliography, which will make it essential reading for students and scholars as well as anyone interested in Tutankhamun.

The invention of the wheel is often highlighted as one of humankinds' most significant inventions. Wheels do not exist in nature, and so can be viewed entirely as a human-inspired invention. Machinery too, was relatively rare in the ancient world. The potter's wheel is arguably the most significant machine introduced into Egypt, second only perhaps to the drill, the loom and the bellows for smelting metal. In Predynastic Egypt (c3500 B.C.), the traditional methods of hand-building pottery vessels were already successful in producing pottery vessels of high quality on a large scale for the domestic market, so it would seem that the potter's wheel was a rather superfluous invention. However, the impact of this innovation would not just have affected the Egyptian potters themselves learning a new skill, but also signalled the beginnings of a more complex and technologically advanced society. Despite many years work on the technology of pottery production it is perhaps surprising that the origins of the potter's wheel in Egypt have yet to be determined. This present project seeks to rectify this situation by determining when the potter's wheel was introduced into Egypt, establishing in what contexts wheel thrown pottery occurs, and considering the reasons why the Egyptians introduced the wheel when a well-established hand making pottery industry already existed.

The history of Ancient Egypt has been studied in the region of Southeast Europe since the end of the nineteenth century. In some of the countries this was not the case for various reasons, but mainly because of the undeveloped scholarly capabilities and institutions, insufficient funds for archaeological research in Egypt, and the lack of cooperation with scholars from other countries. From the 1960s, however, this situation has changed for the better, firstly with the numerous publications of the diffusion of the Ancient Egyptian cults during Graeco-Roman period, and then with publications (articles, catalogues, books) on Ancient Egyptian collections in various museum institutions located in Southeast Europe. From the early 1990s one can trace the increased production of various scholarly papers in which researchers from Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia, Romania, and Bulgaria not only researched the Egyptian cults in the Roman Empire, but also on the various aspects of history, religion and literature of Ancient Egypt. Their work, however, was mostly unknown to the scholars outside the region primarily because the results were written in the native languages. This book will try to give a review of the history of the studies of Ancient Egypt done in Southeast Europe, and present some of the latest research. A History of Research Into Ancient Egyptian Culture in Southeast Europe comprises a selection of papers in which scholars from various institutions of the region reviewed the different aspects of past studies and the development of the research of the Ancient Egypt in some countries, along with recent research in the field. We hope that this publication will be useful for all scholars who are unfamiliar with the historiography of this region.

The decorated tombs of the Egyptian Old Kingdom offer detailed knowledge of a society that in all probability was the first nation state in history. Yet scholars continue to find it difficult to access the full potential of this great body of data because so few of the tombs can be dated with sufficient precision to provide a relative chronology for the evidence they offer. The system of dating these monuments presented here builds on the work of previous scholars. In this volume the author explains how the dating method was devised. This required establishing 'life-spans' for 104 criteria, features drawn from tomb iconography. The system is then applied to Memphite and provincial monuments spanning the Fourth to the Sixth Dynasties. The findings are that the more criteria a monument contains, the closer the system can narrow its date, certainly to a particular reign and within a generation in some cases. The final chapter analyses and discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the system.

Beneath the waters of Abukir Bay, at the edge of the Nile Delta, lie the submerged remains of the ancient Egyptian cities Canopus and Thonis-Heracleion, which sank over 1,000 years ago but were dramatically rediscovered in the 20th century and brought to the surface by marine archaeologists in the 1990s. These pioneering underwater excavations continue today, and have yielded a wealth of ancient artefacts, to be exhibited in Britain for the first time in 2016. Through these spectacular finds, this book tells the story of how two iconic ancient civilizations, Egypt and Greece, interacted in the late first millennium bc. From the foundation of Naukratis and Thonis-Heracleion as trading posts to the conquest of Alexander the Great, through the ensuing centuries of Ptolemaic rule to the ultimate dominance of the Roman Empire on the world stage, Greeks and Egyptians lived alongside one another in these lively cities, sharing their politics, religious ideas, languages, scripts and customs. Greek kings adopted the regalia of the pharaoh; ordinary Greek citizens worshipped in Hellenic sanctuaries next to Egyptian temples; and their ancient gods and mythologies became ever more closely intertwined. This book showcases a spectacular collection of artefacts, coupled with a retelling of the history by world-renowned experts in the subject (including the sites' long-term excavator), bringing the reader face-to-face with this vibrant ancient society. Accompanies the most sensational exhibition of ancient Egyptian and Greek discoveries to be held in the UK for decades, opening at the British Museum.

Bir Umm Fawakhir is a fifth-sixth century AD Coptic/Byzantine gold-mining town located in the central Eastern Desert of Egypt. The Bir Umm Fawakhir Project of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago carried out four seasons of archaeological survey at the site, in 1992, 1993, 1996, and 1997; one season of excavation in 1999; and one study season in 2001. This volume is the final report on the 1996 and 1997 seasons. The goals of the 1996 and 1997 field seasons were to complete the detailed map of the main settlement, to continue the investigation of the outlying clusters of ruins or "Outliers" and to address some specific questions such as the ancient gold-extraction process. The completion of these goals makes the main settlement at Bir Umm Fawakhir one of the only completely mapped towns of the period in Egypt. Not only is the main settlement plotted room for room and door for door but also features such as guardposts, cemeteries, paths, roads, wells, outlying clusters of ruins and mines are known and some of these are features not always readily detectable archaeologically. This volume presents the pre-Coptic material; a detailed discussion of the remains in the main settlement, outliers and cemeteries; the Coptic/Byzantine pottery, small finds and dipinti; as well as a study of ancient mining techniques.

The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt describes the emergence and development of the distinctive civilization of the ancient Egyptians, from their prehistoric origins to their conquest by the Persians, Greeks, and Romans. It details the changing nature of life and death in the Nile valley, which gave rise to some of the earliest masterpieces of art, architecture, and literature in the ancient world.

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.

The numbering system for the Early Egyptian inscriptions, which was originally introduced by J. Kahl (1994) and which was expanded by I. Regulski in her Database of Early Dynastic inscriptions, is mapped on the numbering system defined by J. Kahl, N. Kloth and U. Zimmermann (1995) for the 3rd Dynasty inscription and on this of P. Kaplony (IAEF, IAEFS, KBIAEF). The numbering system has been expended to provide a unique identifier for each inscription that can be used as a reference in databases and printed publications. (German introduction.)

A second revised and updated edition of Carlos Gracia Zamacona's Manual de Egipcio Medio [Handbook of Middle Egyptian]. The book is designed as a primer, written in Spanish, to learn Middle Egyptian (2000-1500 BC), which was considered by the Egyptians the 'classic' stage of their language, and a guide to read hieroglyphs. The grammatical explanation is accompanied by a full list of hieroglyphic signs (Gardiner's plus recent refinements), basic vocabulary, gradual exercises (with translation), and a short, updated bibliography. The book's main aim is didactic, but it also addresses the latest theoretical and methodological issues in Egyptology and Linguistics/Este libro es circunstancial. Se podra decir que todos lo son, pero este me llego por pura casualidad a raiz de unos cursos de lengua y escritura egipcia organizados por la Asociacion de Amigos del Museo Arqueologico Nacional de Madrid en 2007. Mi intencion inicial fue la de preparar un material para los participantes de los cursos, siendo consciente de lo dificil que es empezar a leer jeroglificos y comprender una lengua muy distinta de la nuestra o de las que nos son familiares. Debido a la misma complejidad del egipcio, que en esto no difiere de cualquier otra lengua natural, asi como a mi tendencia a acabar lo que empiezo, me encontre un par de meses despues de finalizados los cursos con un manual de iniciacion al egipcio medio, el estado de la lengua considerado "clasico" por los propios egipcios y en el que estan escritos, sobre todo, los textos del llamado Reino o Imperio Medio, que se extendio, de manera aproximada, desde el ano 2000 hasta el 1500 antes de Cristo.

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 volume explores the earliest appearances and functions of the five major Egyptian goddesses Neith, Hathor, Nut, Isis and Nephthys. Although their importance endured throughout more than three millennia of ancient Egyptian history, their origins, earliest roles, and relationships in religion, myth, and cult have never before been studied together in detail. Showcasing the latest research with carefully chosen illustrations and a full bibliography, Susan Tower Hollis suggests that the origins of the goddesses derived primarily from their functions, as, shown by their first appearances in the text and art of the Protodynastic, Early Dynastic, and Old Kingdom periods of the late fourth and third millennia BCE. The roles of the goddess Bat are also explored where she is viewed both as an independent figure and in her specific connections to Hathor, including the background to their shared bovine iconography. Hollis provides evidence of the goddesses' close ties with royalty and, in the case of Neith, her special connections to early queens. Vital reading for all scholars of Egyptian religion and other ancient religions and mythology, this volume brings to light the earliest origins of these goddesses who would go on to play major parts in later narratives, myths, and mortuary cult.

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.

Chariots, the racing cars of the ancient world, first appeared in Egypt about 1600 BC, and quickly became not only the preferred mode of transport for royalty and the elite, but also revolutionised military tactics and warfare. Remains of chariots have been found in Egyptian tombs -Tutankhamun's tomb contained six chariots, which tripled the number of ancient Egyptian chariots known before the discovery of his tomb. However, none of the chariots was complete, as all lacked their leather casings, which were only known from images on tomb and temple walls. In 2008, the Ancient Egyptian Leatherwork Project (AELP) working in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, found a cache of several trays of red and green leather containing some 60 large leather fragments. Some of these had been noted before, but the find had been largely ignored and buried in the depths of the museum. This remarkable object entered the museum in 1932, a purchase from the Tano family, reputable dealers at that time, hence the nick-name 'Tano Chariot'. The Tano leather all came from a single chariot, including portions of the bow-case, the body's casing and the horse housing. The leather is elaborately decorated in appliqued green and red or beige leather. Parallels for some of these fragments are found in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the AEgyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung in Berlin, many of which, until their appearance in this volume, are unpublished. This includes the chariot leather from the tombs of Amenhotep II, III, Tuthmose IV and Tutankhamun. This book presents the Tano material with fully illustrated, detailed descriptions. Chariot related texts and technological analyses - together with detailed comparisons with other chariots and associated leather remains - help provide possible dates for it. The find is put into context with chapters on relevant hieroglyphic texts, and a study of representations of chariots that help identify the various parts, and highlight the role of the chariot in Egyptian religion, propaganda, and culture. The Tano Chariot leather, despite being unprovenanced, is a unique find, which reveals a great deal about ancient Egyptian leatherwork technologies, warfare, weapons, and chariotry.