A clear understanding of the relationship between archaeology and literary material is crucial for scholars who wish to reconstruct the history of emerging Israel. The papers assembled in this work use recent research in key areas - the early settlements of Israel, early Israelite religion, Qumran, Jerusalem, early Christian churches - to show that ancient writings and modern archeaology can illuminate each other, but only when used with professsional care. The essays represent a generation of archaeologists and historians, with social, political and religious concerns who draw a useful picture of the emergence of ancient Israel.

This study is an analysis of the Qumran Wisdom texts. New translations and an explanation of the background and context of Wisdom literature introduce the reader to a little discussed part of the Dead Sea Scrolls. After surveying biblical and extrabiblical Wisdom books, the author considers the best and most fully preserved Wisdom texts from Qumran. The centrepiece of the book is a discussion of the large Wisdom instruction known as Sapiential Work A. Also, the author reflects on the relevance of those texts for the study of early Judaism and Christianity. An appendix treats the Ben Sira scroll from Masada. "The Maccabean Revolt" (1988) "John's Thought and Theology" (1990) "The Gospel of Matthew" (1991).

This study is the first full analysis of the Qumran wisdom texts. New translations and a full explanation of the background and context of wisdom literature introduce the reader to an important and hitherto little discussed part of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
After surveying biblical and extrabiblical wisdom books, the author considers the best and most fully preserved wisdom texts from Qumran. The centrepiece of the book is a discussion of the large wisdom instruction known as Sapiential Work A. Also, the author reflects on the relevance of those texts for the study of early Judaism and Christianity. An appendix treats the Ben Sira scroll from Masada.

The riveting story of a true-life female Indiana Jones: an archaeologist who survived the Nazis and then saved Egypt's ancient temples. In the 1960s, the world's attention was focused on a nail-biting race against time: fifty countries had contributed nearly a billion dollars to save a dozen ancient Egyptian temples from drowning in the floodwaters of the gigantic new Aswan High Dam. It was a project of unimaginable size and complexity that required the fragile sandstone temples to be dismantled, stone by stone, and rebuilt on higher ground. But the massive press coverage of this unprecedented rescue effort completely overlooked the gutsy French archaeologist who made it all happen. Without the intervention of Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt, the temples would now be at the bottom of a gigantic reservoir. Desroches-Noblecourt refused to be cowed by anyone or anything. As a brave member of the French Resistance in World War II, she had survived imprisonment by the Nazis. Now, in her fight to save the temples, she had to face down two of the most daunting leaders of the postwar world: Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser and French president Charles de Gaulle. After a century and a half of Western plunder of Egypt's ancient monuments, Desroches-Noblecourt helped preserve a crucial part of its cultural heritage, and, just as importantly, made sure it remained in its homeland.

Originally published in 1923, this book provides an exploration of Egyptian art. Drawing on environmental factors of the Egyptian region, architecture, history and Egyptian society, Capart also provides an insight into the psyche of the Egyptian artist.

The haunting funerary paintings on wood coffins found in Roman Egypt still represent some of the most vivid images that come to us from the ancient world. These paintings were first discovered by Flinders Petrie, father of modern archaeology, in his excavations in the Egyptian Fayum during the 1880s and have rested at University College London for over 100 years. Now, the Petrie Museum is bringing this corpus of paintings to the public in a stunning catalog. Living Images is a beautiful and authoritative presentation of the restored collection that will be an essential reference for scholars and a fascinating read for general audiences. Central to the volume is a complete catalog of the mummy portraits uncovered by Petrie, including full color illustrations and descriptions of technical and stylistic features and iconographic characteristics. To add to the value of the volume, articles describe the process of finding the mummies, explain the place of funerary assemblages in the history of Egyptian burial customs, offer an introduction to Egyptian portrait painting, and explain the conservation issues presented by the coffins. Petrie's own reflections on his finds are also included. The volume is dedicated to the memory of Egyptologist Barbara Adams and co-sponsored by the Petrie Museum.

The ancient Egyptians had very definite views about their neighbours, some positive, some negative. As one would expect, Egyptian perceptions of 'the other' were subject to change over time, especially in response to changing political, social and economic conditions. Thus, as Asiatics became a more familiar part of everyday life in Egypt, and their skills and goods became increasingly important, depictions of them took on more favourable aspects. The investigation by necessity involves a multi-disciplined approach which seeks to combine and synthesize data from a wider variety of sources than drawn upon in earlier studies. By the same token, the book addresses the interests of, and has appeal to, a broad spectrum of scholars and general readers.

Writing, Violence, and the Military takes representations of reading and writing in Eighteenth Dynasty Egypt (ca. 1550-1295 BCE) as its point of departure, asking how patrons of art conceptualized literacy and how in turn they positioned themselves with respect to it. Exploring statuary and tomb art through the prism of self-representation and group formation, it makes three claims. Firstly, that the elite of this period held a variety of notions regarding literacy, among which violence and memory are most prominent. Secondly, that among the Eighteenth Dynasty elite, literacy found its strongest advocates among men whose careers brought them to engage with the military, either as military officials or as civil administrators who accompanied the army beyond the borders of Egypt. Finally, that Haremhab - the General in Chief who later ascended the throne - voiced unique views regarding literacy that arose from his career as an elite military official, and thus from his social world. Consequently, images of reading and writing allow us to study literacy with regard to those who commissioned them, and to consider these patrons' roles in changing conceptualizations. Throughout their different formulations, these representations call for a discussion on literacy in relation to self-representation and to art's role in society. They also invite us to reconsider our own approach to literacy and its significance in ancient times.

The Living Inca Town presents a rich case study of tourism in Ollantaytambo, a rapidly developing destination in the southern Peruvian Andes and the starting point for many popular treks to Machu Picchu. Tourism is generally welcomed in Ollantaytambo, as it provides a steady stream of work for local businesses, particularly those run by women. However, the obvious material inequalities between locals and tourists affect many interactions and have contributed to conflict and aggression throughout the tourist zones. Based on a number of research visits over the course of fifteen years, The Living Inca Town examines the experiences and interactions of locals, visitors, and tourism brokers. The book makes room for unique perspectives and uses innovative visual methods, including photovoice images and pen and ink drawings, to represent different viewpoints of day-to-day tourist encounters. The Living Inca Town vividly illustrates how tourism can perpetuate gendered and global inequalities, while also exploring new avenues to challenge and renegotiate these roles.

The haunting funerary paintings on wood coffins found in Roman Egypt still represent some of the most vivid images that come to us from the ancient world. These paintings were first discovered by Flinders Petrie, father of modern archaeology, in his excavations in the Egyptian Fayum during the 1880s and have rested at University College London for over 100 years. Now, the Petrie Museum is bringing this corpus of paintings to the public in a stunning catalog. Living Images is a beautiful and authoritative presentation of the restored collection that will be an essential reference for scholars and a fascinating read for general audiences. Central to the volume is a complete catalog of the mummy portraits uncovered by Petrie, including full color illustrations and descriptions of technical and stylistic features and iconographic characteristics. To add to the value of the volume, articles describe the process of finding the mummies, explain the place of funerary assemblages in the history of Egyptian burial customs, offer an introduction to Egyptian portrait painting, and explain the conservation issues presented by the coffins. Petrie's own reflections on his finds are also included. The volume is dedicated to the memory of Egyptologist Barbara Adams and co-sponsored by the Petrie Museum.

It is widely believed that the practice of ancient Egyptian religion ceased with the end of pharaonic culture and the rise of Christianity. However, an organised reconstruction and revival of the authentic practice of Egyptian, or Kemetic religion has been growing, almost undocumented, for nearly three decades. Profane Egyptologists is the first in-depth study of the now-global phenomenon of Kemeticism. Presenting key players in their own words, the book utilises extensive interviews to reveal a continuum of beliefs and practices spanning eight years of community growth. The existence of competing visions of Egypt, which employ ancient material and academic resources, questions the position of Egyptology as a gatekeeper of Egypt's past. Exploring these boundaries, the book highlights the politised and economic factors driving the discipline's self-conception. Could an historically self-imposed insular nature have harmed Egyptology as a field, and how could inclusive discussion help guard against further isolationism? Profane Egyptologists is both an Egyptological study of Kemeticism, and a critical study of the discipline of Egyptology itself. It will be of value to scholars and students of archaeology and Egyptology, cultural heritage, religion online, phenomenology, epistemology, pagan studies and ethnography, as well as Kemetics and devotees of Egyptian culture.

The author uses the heb-sed, or Sed-festival, an ancient Egyptian religious festival that can be traced to the Archaic period, as the basis for a comparative study for providing insights into the controversial reign of Amenhotep IV - Akhenaten.

This Element offers a new approach to ancient Egyptian images informed by interdisciplinary work in archaeology, anthropology, and art history. Sidestepping traditional perspectives on Egyptian art, the Element focuses squarely on the ontological status of the image in ancient thought and experience. To accomplish this, section 2 takes up a number of central Egyptian terms for images, showing that a close examination of their etymology and usage can help resolve long-standing question on Egyptian imaging practices. Section 3 discusses ancient Egyptian experiences of materials and manufacturing processes, while section 4 categorizes and discusses the different purposes and functions for which images were created. The Element as a whole thus offers a concise introduction to ancient Egyptian imaging practices for an interdisciplinary readership, while at the same introducing new ways of thinking about familiar material for the Egyptological reader.

In December 1991, a two-volume edition of Dead Sea Scroll photographs was issued by the Biblical Archaeology Society, an American group headed by Hershel Shanks. It included an essay written by Dr. Elisha Qimron, an Israeli scholar noted for his work in the language of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Publication of this reconstruction and transcription resulted in a lawsuit in Israel and the United States between Qimron and Shanks. Piracy in Qumran analyzes this legal controversy, which rocked the scholarly world of Biblical and archaeological studies at the time, and which still resonates today. Qimron's long years of research so as to decipher one of the scrolls that dated from the years immediately preceding the Christian Era led him to revolutionary conclusions. He had controversial ideas about the ancient laws of purity of the Essenes, the authors of the scrolls, and their problematic relationships with the two main streams of Judaism. Read or reconstructed differently, this same text might yield very different conclusions. The emphasis in Raphael Israeli's volume is on legal and moral aspects of intellectual property law as it relates to works of historical reconstruction. There are questions about whether Qimron's work constitutes something original, the fruit of his creativity (and thus is copyrightable) versus whether it is merely a copy of an ancient blurred text, in the public domain, reconstructed by a modern author. This book does not simply take a position with respect to the matter of Qimron versus Shanks, it asks the reader to consider the controversy's implications for such topics as freedom of press. Although there are other books available about the Dead Sea Scrolls, no other study examines the social and cultural implications of this crisis in such detail. The story itself is intriguing for those who are not specialists in the subject, but are generally interested in the issues raised by the controversy. It will be of intense interest to scholars and students of religion or international law and historians of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Violence and Power in Ancient Egypt examines the use of Egyptian pictures of violence prior to the New Kingdom. Starting with the assertion that making and displaying such images served as a tactic of power, related to but separate from the actual practice of violence, the book explores the development and deployment of this imagery across different contexts. By comparatively utilizing violent images from a variety of other times and cultures, the book asks that we consider not only how Egyptian imagery was related to Egyptian violence, but also why people create pictures of violence and place them where they do, and how such images communicate what to whom. By cataloging and querying Egyptian imagery of violence from different periods and different contexts-royal tombs, divine temples, the landscape, portable objects, and private tombs-Violence and Power highlights the nuances of the relationship between aspects of royal ideology, art, and its audiences in the first half of pharaonic Egyptian history.

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. Tracing ten key biographies, 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, the various roles and identities of the scribes are presented in a concise and accessible way, offering structured information on their cultural identity and self-presentation, and providing readers with an insight into the making of Egyptian written culture.

Ancient Egypt is a beautifully illustrated, easy-to-read book covering the formative era of the Egyptian civilization: the age before the pyramids. Douglas Brewer shows why an awareness of the earliest phase of Egyptian history is crucial to understanding of later Egyptian culture. Beginning with a quick review of the fields of Egyptology and archaeology, Ancient Egypt takes the reader on a compelling survey of Egypt's prehistoric past. The books tours the Nile Valley to explore its impact on all aspects of life, from day-to-day living to regional politics, and introduces the reader to the Nile Valley's earliest inhabitants and the very first "Egyptians".

Vibrant tapestries of beribboned birds, cantering centaurs, and Dionysian dancers, woven in Coptic Egypt more than a thousand years ago, were artfully arranged in a handsome pair of albums in 1913. Some of the fabrics are shown in unique collage compositions. Sandals, spindles, and a mysterious lock of hair are assembled in a shallow box at the back of one album. Many textiles in this important collection, housed at the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington, were once joined by warp and weft with those from the Mus e du Louvre and other major museums. Nancy Hoskins deftly interweaves the creation of the textiles in the Greco-Roman city of Antino, Egypt, with their discovery by the charismatic French archaeologist Albert Gayet (1856-1916). Gayet staged stunning exhibitions of the pieces in Paris at the turn of the century and ultimately gave them to museums or sold them. One collector, Henry Bryon, had his 144 fabrics bound into the two albums featured here. The album pages and covers are illustrated in glowing color, along with archival photographs from Gayet's expeditions. The style, structure, and iconography of each tapestry, tabby, and tablet-woven textile are discussed within the cultural construct of Late Antique and Early Christian Egypt. Detailed technical drawings illustrate the special weaving techniques of the Copts. Directions for six weaving projects inspired by the album fragments are included. The story of the inimitable Coptic tapestry albums will delight weavers, textile historians, art historians, and archaeologists. Nancy Arthur Hoskins, a former college weaving instructor, researched Coptic collections in over fifty museums around the world. She is the author of Universal Stitches for Weaving, Embroidery, and Other Fiber Arts and Weft-Faced Pattern Weaves: Tabby to Taquet . OMaster weaver, scholarly detective, and sensitive connoisseur, Nancy Hoskins combines all these skills to describe and identify this unusually wide range of Egyptian Coptic textile fragments. Her descriptions of weaving techniques create a fundamental glossary of technical terms, which all who study textiles should use. The detailed data on each piece are a benchmark for all who work in the field.O N Jere L. Bacharach, Director, American Research Center in Egypt"

The last of the Ptolemaic monarchs who ruled Egypt for 300 years, Cleopatra is the most famous of the Ptolemaic queens. But what of her predecessors? The Last Queens of Egypt examines the roles played by the Ptolemaic royal women and explores their part in religion, politics and court intrigue. Explaining their propensity for incest, murder and power, Sally Ann Ashton shows the extent of the power they enjoyed, the price they paid, and how they shaped Cleopatra's reign.

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 1971, this book was the first major survey ever made in this field. It includes all the main museum collections in the world, and enables comparative study of almost all the known jewellery from predynastic times to the end of the XXVIth Dynasty (525 B.C.) to be made. The jewellery of the ancient Egyptian civilization was of a delicacy and magnificence seldom rivalled; much has been learned by comparing the jewels themselves, and the techniques and materials of those who made them. But this book draws also on other branches of Egyptian art, since paintings and sculpture sometimes provide evidence showing how the jewellery was made and worn. Each section opens with a brief history of the period reviewed, and an account of the manner in which the individual jewels were discovered - both of which help those readers unfamiliar with Egyptological matters. The key pieces are described in detail, and the text is generously illustrated with line drawings and plates. An indispensable reference book for all those with an interest in the art of ancient Egypt.

First published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In Rosalie David's hands, the Egyptian builders of the pyramids are revealed as simple people, leading ordinary lives while they are engaged on building the great tomb for a Pharoah. This is an engrossing detective story, bringing to the general reader a fascinating picture of a special community that lived in Egypt and built one of the pyramids, some four thousand years ago.

The Living Inca Town presents a rich case study of tourism in Ollantaytambo, a rapidly developing destination in the southern Peruvian Andes and the starting point for many popular treks to Machu Picchu. Tourism is generally welcomed in Ollantaytambo, as it provides a steady stream of work for local businesses, particularly those run by women. However, the obvious material inequalities between locals and tourists affect many interactions and have contributed to conflict and aggression throughout the tourist zones. Based on a number of research visits over the course of fifteen years, The Living Inca Town examines the experiences and interactions of locals, visitors, and tourism brokers. The book makes room for unique perspectives and uses innovative visual methods, including photovoice images and pen and ink drawings, to represent different viewpoints of day-to-day tourist encounters. The Living Inca Town vividly illustrates how tourism can perpetuate gendered and global inequalities, while also exploring new avenues to challenge and renegotiate these roles.

Few topics are as broad or as daunting as the God of Israel, that deity of the world's three monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, who has been worshiped over millennia. In the Hebrew Bible, God is characterized variously as militant, beneficent, inscrutable, loving, and judicious. Who is this divinity that has been represented as masculine and feminine, mythic and real, transcendent and intimate? The Origin and Character of God is Theodore J. Lewis's monumental study of the vast subject that is the God of Israel. In it, he explores questions of historical origin, how God was characterized in literature, and how he was represented in archaeology and iconography. He also brings us into the lived reality of religious experience. Using the window of divinity to peer into the varieties of religious experience in ancient Israel, Lewis explores the royal use of religion for power, prestige, and control; the intimacy of family and household religion; priestly prerogatives and cultic status; prophetic challenges to injustice; and the pondering of theodicy by poetic sages. A volume that is encyclopedic in scope but accessible in tone, The Origin and Character of God is an essential addition to the growing scholarship of one of humanity's most enduring concepts.