The surgeon William Ainsworth (1807-96) acted as the geologist of the 1835 Euphrates Expedition, his account of which is also reissued in this series. Great interest was aroused by the scientific and archaeological findings of that journey, and a further expedition was funded, ostensibly to make contact with the Nestorian Christians of the region, but covertly to make further mineralogical investigations. Ainsworth was the leader of the expedition, and his two-volume account was published in 1842. Starting from Istanbul in 1839, Ainsworth took a route through Asia Minor, northern Syria, Kurdistan, Persia and Armenia, returning to Istanbul in 1840. The expedition was regarded as unsuccessful, as Ainsworth had massively overspent the budget originally allotted by the sponsors, and his secret activities were discovered by the Ottoman authorities, but the work remains a vivid account of the area. Volume 2 describes the journey through Armenia, and the return via Trebizond.

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

The career of Arthur Weigall (1880-1934) encompassed Egyptology but also stage design, film criticism and journalism, as well as fiction and books about ancient Egypt. After studying in Germany, he worked at Abydos with Flinders Petrie, but in 1905 he was unexpectedly promoted to Chief Inspector of Antiquities for Upper Egypt, when Howard Carter was forced to resign. His work in Egypt, especially in the area of Luxor, focused on the conservation of monuments and the prevention of the shipping of artefacts abroad, until 1911, when he returned to London. In the preface to this illustrated two-volume work, published in 1925, Weigall likens the writing of a history of Egypt to the piecing together of a jigsaw puzzle consisting of thousands of pieces, but intends to present a chronological narrative at a level to satisfy both the scholar and the interested amateur. Volume 1 covers the first eleven dynasties.

The concept of pharaonic Egypt as a unified, homogeneous, and isolated cultural entity is misleading. Ancient Egypt was a rich tapestry of social, religious, technological, and economic interconnections among numerous cultures from disparate lands. This volume uniquely examines Egypt's relationship with its wider world through fifteen chapters arranged in five thematic groups. The first three chapters detail the geographical contexts of interconnections through examination of ancient Egyptian exploration, maritime routes, and overland passages. The next three chapters address the human principals of association: peoples, with the attendant difficulties differentiating ethnic identities from the record; diplomatic actors, with their complex balances and presentations of power; and the military, with its evolving role in pharaonic expansion. Natural events, too, played significant roles in the pharaonic world: geological disasters, the effects of droughts and floods on the Nile, and illness and epidemics all delivered profound impacts, as is seen in the third section. Physical manifestations of interconnections between pharaonic Egypt and its neighbors in the form of objects are the focus of the fourth set: trade, art and architecture, and a specific case study of scarabs. The final section discusses in depth perhaps the most powerful means of interconnection: ideas. Whether through diffusion and borrowing of knowledge and technology, through the flow of words by script and literature, or through exchanges in the religious sphere, the pharaonic Egypt that we know today was constantly changing-and changing the cultures around it.

Arthur Weigall (1880-1934) is chiefly remembered as an Egyptologist, although he also wrote novels, screenplays and film reviews. Following a period spent working with Flinders Petrie at Abydos, he succeeded Howard Carter in 1905 as Chief Inspector of Antiquities for Upper Egypt at Luxor. Here he worked diligently to protect Egyptian artefacts from the ravages of thieves, antiques dealers, public works, and amateur excavators. Ill health then forced a return to London, where Weigall became a successful set designer and later moved into journalism. He returned to Egypt to report on Carter's discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb for the Daily Mail. This collection of essays, accessible to non-specialists, appeared in 1923. Written in response to the extraordinary surge of public interest in Egyptology, the book covers various archaeological and historical subjects, taking Tutankhamun's magnificent tomb in the Valley of the Kings as its starting point.

This highly illustrated 1900 work on Egypt old and new by John Ward (1832-1912) seeks to guide the visitor to the ancient sites while also remarking on the radical changes to the economy and the development of the modern state since the intervention of the British government in 1883 and the appointment of Lord Cromer as consul-general and effective ruler. This blending of ancient and modern can be seen in discussions of Port Said ('not an Egyptian town at all') alongside the abandoned and silted-up delta ports of the Egyptians, Ptolemies and Ottomans. Thebes is discussed both as a city of the living and a city of the dead, and Ward notes approvingly the flattening of the ancient town of Assouan (Aswan), to form the foundations for new public buildings, on the orders of Lord Kitchener. Ward's subsequent book, Our Sudan (1905), is also reissued in this series.

The career of Arthur Weigall (1880-1934) encompassed Egyptology but also stage design, film criticism and journalism. After studying in Germany, he worked at Abydos with Flinders Petrie, but in 1905 he was unexpectedly promoted to Chief Inspector of Antiquities for Upper Egypt, when Howard Carter was forced to resign. His work in Egypt, especially in the area of Luxor, focused on the conservation of monuments and the prevention of shipping of artefacts abroad, until 1911, when he returned to London. This 1907 book on the condition of the monuments between the First Cataract and the Sudanese frontier arose from his work as inspector, and is intended as 'a preliminary description of monuments and ancient remains which require to be thoroughly studied'. Unlike Weigall's travellers' guides to Egypt, this is a factual and technical work, drawing attention to the threats to monuments from neglect, plunder, and the Nile floods.

The career of Arthur Weigall (1880-1934) encompassed Egyptology but also stage design, film criticism and journalism, as well as fiction and books about ancient Egypt. After studying in Germany, he worked at Abydos with Flinders Petrie, but in 1905 he was unexpectedly promoted to Chief Inspector of Antiquities for Upper Egypt, when Howard Carter was forced to resign. His work in Egypt, especially in the area of Luxor, focused on the conservation of monuments and the prevention of shipping of artefacts abroad, until 1911, when he returned to London. He did not revisit Egypt until, as a journalist, he covered the opening of Tutankhamen's tomb in 1922. In this 1910 guide, writing 'from careful and prolonged personal observation and thought', Weigall describes the less frequented ancient sites of Upper Egypt, beginning north of Thebes and descending to the Second Cataract and the Sudanese border.

This 1838 work by Samuel Sharpe (1799-1881) is the second of two volumes on the history of ancient Egypt; the first, dealing with the earlier period, is also reissued in this series. From a banking family, Sharpe was fascinated by Young's and Champollion's work in deciphering the hieroglyphs. He taught himself Coptic, and compiled his own hieroglyphic vocabulary lists. His facility for decipherment was assisted by a natural gift for solving cryptograms, but his inferences sometimes led him into error. This book, in which Sharpe follows his earlier technique of using inscriptions as well as historical works as sources, begins with a survey of the history of Egypt up to the time of Alexander the Great; the interested reader is referred to Sharpe's earlier volume for more details. He then surveys the Ptolemaic era by reigns, ending with the battle of Actium and the conquest of Egypt by Augustus.

This 1836 work by Samuel Sharpe (1799-1881) is the first of two volumes on the history of ancient Egypt; the second, dealing with the Ptolemaic period, is also reissued in this series. From a banking family, Sharpe was fascinated by Thomas Young's and Champollion's work in deciphering the hieroglyphs. He taught himself Coptic, and compiled his own hieroglyphic vocabulary lists. His facility for decipherment was assisted by a natural gift for solving cryptograms, but his inferences sometimes led him into error. His objective in this book is 'to collect out of the writings of the ancients every particular relating to the History of Egypt', marshalling ancient authorities including the Old Testament, Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus and the Ptolemaic priest Manetho, whose division of the rulers into dynasties is still relied on. The second part of the book uses this evidence to discuss Egyptian life, language, beliefs and customs.

The most lasting achievement of the German Egyptologist Heinrich Karl Brugsch (1827-94) is perhaps his work on the Egyptian demotic script, which had been relatively neglected since Champollion's death. This illustrated two-volume history of Egypt, 'derived entirely from the monuments', was first published in an English translation (by H. D. Seymour, from the 1876 first German edition, and edited by Philip Smith) in 1879. Brugsch brings to bear his wide experience of the archaeological sites together with his linguistic expertise, and deliberately eschews later Greek and Roman accounts of Egypt. Volume 1 gives a detailed survey of the physical environment of Egypt before considering the pre-dynastic period, and the emergence of Menes, the first known pharaoh. He then takes the narrative through the Old and Middle Kingdoms, and the intermediate period, to the emergence of the New Kingdom and the flowering and end of the Eighteenth Dynasty.

The most lasting achievement of the German Egyptologist Heinrich Karl Brugsch (1827-94) is perhaps his work on the Egyptian demotic script, which had been relatively neglected since Champollion's death. This two-volume illustrated history of Egypt, 'derived entirely from the monuments', was first published in an English translation (by H. D. Seymour, from the 1876 first German edition, and edited by Philip Smith) in 1879. Brugsch brings to bear his wide experience of the archaeological sites together with his linguistic expertise, and deliberately eschews later Greek and Roman accounts of Egypt. Volume 2 covers the period from the Nineteenth Dynasty, the time of the empire's widest extent under Seti I and Rameses II, through the later decline and disintegration, with ruling dynasties from Nubia and Assyria, to the Persian conquest in 525 BCE. An appendix discusses the biblical account of Exodus in the context of Egyptian material remains.

This book investigates the founding and building of cities in the ancient Near East. The creation of new cities was imagined as an ideological project or a divine intervention in the political narratives and mythologies of Near Eastern cultures, often masking the complex processes behind the social production of urban space. During the Early Iron Age (c.1200-850 BCE), Assyrian and Syro-Hittite rulers developed a highly performative official discourse that revolved around constructing cities, cultivating landscapes, building watercourses, erecting monuments and initiating public festivals. This volume combs through archaeological, epigraphic, visual, architectural and environmental evidence to tell the story of a region from the perspective of its spatial practices, landscape history and architectural technologies. It argues that the cultural processes of the making of urban spaces shape collective memory and identity as well as sites of political performance and state spectacle.

With a history of use extending back to Vedic texts of the second millennium BC, derivations of the name Mithra appear in the Roman Empire, across Sasanian Persia, and in the Kushan Empire of southern Afghanistan and northern India during the first millennium AD. Even today, this name has a place in Yazidi and Zoroastrian religion. But what connection have Mihr in Persia, Miiro in Kushan Bactria, and Mithras in the Roman Empire to one another? Over the course of the volume, specialists in the material culture of these diverse regions explore appearances of the name Mithra from six distinct locations in antiquity. In a subversion of the usual historical process, the authors begin not from an assessment of texts, but by placing images of Mithra at the heart of their analysis. Careful consideration of each example's own context, situating it in the broader scheme of religious traditions and on-going cultural interactions, is key to this discussion. Such an approach opens up a host of potential comparisons and interpretations that are often side-lined in historical accounts. What Images of Mithra offers is a fresh approach to the ways in which gods were labelled and depicted in the ancient world. Through an emphasis on material culture, a more nuanced understanding of the processes of religious formation is proposed in what is but the first part of the Visual Conversations series.

The traveller and archaeologist Sir Charles Fellows (1799-1860) made several trips through Asia Minor. This work is an account of the first of these, recording his careful observations of the lands he travelled through. On this trip, he found ancient cities which were unknown to Europeans at that time, including Xanthos, the capital of ancient Lycia, dating from the fifth century BCE. Fellows' narrative brings the journey to life with vivid descriptions of the people and places he encountered, and detailed sketches of notable antiquities and inscriptions. First published in 1839, this work generated significant interest, fuelling the British Museum's eagerness to acquire antiquities from the region. Fellows was later knighted for his role in these acquisitions, though controversy surrounds their removal. Two of his later works, An Account of Discoveries in Lycia (1841) and The Xanthian Marbles (1843), are also reissued in this series.

Landlord villages dominated Iranian land tenure for hundreds of years, whereby one powerful landlord owned the village structures, surrounding farmland, and to all intents and purposes, the village occupants themselves, a system that in some cases remained in place up to the 1979 Islamic Revolution. In Oman, mud-brick oases were home to most of the rural population right up until Sultan Qaboos came to power in 1970, and required inhabitants of mud-brick houses to relocate into new concrete block buildings. Historical Archaeology and Heritage in the Middle East explores these everyday, rural communities in Iran and Oman in the 19th and 20th centuries, through a combination of building analysis, excavation, artefact analysis and ethnographic interviews. Drawing on the results of original field projects, the book considers new ways of exploring traditional lifeways, giving voice to hitherto largely ignored sections of the population, and offers new and different ways of thinking about how these people lived and what shaped their lives and the impact of major political and social changes on them. Place, memory and belonging are considered through the lens of material culture within these villages. The first of its kind, the book brings together methodologies, research questions, and themes that have never been used or addressed in the Middle East. Helping to establish historical archaeology in the Middle East and providing new ways in which the memorable, quotidian past can be exploited for its social and economic value in contemporary community and heritage developments, it is an ideal resource for students, scholars and practitioners of historical archaeology and heritage of and in the Middle East.

A companion volume to the third edition of the author's popular Middle Egyptian, this book contains eight literary works from the Middle Kingdom, the golden age of Middle Egyptian literature. Included are the compositions widely regarded as the pinnacle of Egyptian literary arts, by the Egyptians themselves as well as by modern readers. The works are presented in hieroglyphic transcription, transliteration and translation, accompanied by notes cross-referenced to the third edition of Middle Egyptian. These are designed to give students of Middle Egyptian access to original texts and the tools to practise and perfect their knowledge of the language. The principles of ancient Egyptian verse, in which all the works are written, are discussed, and the transliterations and translations are versified, giving students practice in this aspect of Egyptian literature as well. Consecutive translations are also included for reference and for readers more concerned with Middle Egyptian literature than language.

In this book, Lauren Ristvet rethinks the narratives of state formation by investigating the interconnections between ritual, performance, and politics in the ancient Near East. She draws on a wide range of archaeological, iconographic, and cuneiform sources to show how ritual performance was not set apart from the real practice of politics; it was politics. Rituals provided an opportunity for elites and ordinary people to negotiate political authority. Descriptions of rituals from three periods explore the networks of signification that informed different societies. From circa 2600 to 2200 BC, pilgrimage made kingdoms out of previously isolated villages. Similarly, from circa 1900 to 1700 BC, commemorative ceremonies legitimated new political dynasties by connecting them to a shared past. Finally, in the Hellenistic period, the traditional Babylonian Akitu festival was an occasion for Greek-speaking kings to show that they were Babylonian and for Babylonian priests to gain significant power.

An army officer and politician, Richard William Howard Vyse (1784-53) also made his mark as an Egyptologist. This three-volume work, published in 1840-2, has remained an instructive resource in Egyptology up to the present day. Adopting the style of a journal, with illustrations and diagrams throughout, it narrates in detail his excavations at Giza, surveying and measuring the pyramids. Following Vyse's return to England, the work was continued by the engineer and surveyor John Shae Perring (1813-69). Vyse gives observations of his travels, and of the landscape, people and architecture he encountered, as well as details of the important work he carried out. Most notable was his discovery, using gunpowder, of four new chambers in the Great Pyramid containing 'quarry marks' - graffiti by the pyramid builders. Volume 1 (1840) covers the start of his travels in Egypt and the early excavations on the Great Pyramid.

An army officer and politician, Richard William Howard Vyse (1784-53) also made his mark as an Egyptologist. This three-volume work, published in 1840-2, has remained an instructive resource in Egyptology up to the present day. Adopting the style of a journal, with illustrations and diagrams throughout, it narrates in detail his excavations at Giza, surveying and measuring the pyramids. Following Vyse's return to England, the work was continued by the engineer and surveyor John Shae Perring (1813-69). Vyse gives observations of his travels, and of the landscape, people and architecture he encountered, as well as details of the important work he carried out. Most notable was his discovery, using gunpowder, of four new chambers in the Great Pyramid containing 'quarry marks' - graffiti by the pyramid builders. Volume 2 (1840) contains detailed descriptions of the excavation of several pyramids and their contents, and appendices with extensive measurements.

An army officer and politician, Richard William Howard Vyse (1784-53) also made his mark as an Egyptologist. This three-volume work, published in 1840-2, has remained an instructive resource in Egyptology up to the present day. Adopting the style of a journal, with illustrations and diagrams throughout, it narrates in detail his excavations at Giza, surveying and measuring the pyramids. Following Vyse's return to England, the work was continued by the engineer and surveyor John Shae Perring (1813-69). Vyse gives observations of his travels, and of the landscape, people and architecture he encountered, as well as details of the important work he carried out. Most notable was his discovery, using gunpowder, of four new chambers in the Great Pyramid containing 'quarry marks' - graffiti by the pyramid builders. Volume 3 (1842) describes the work continued by Perring on various pyramids, and on the mummy pits at Saqqara.

Oimenepthah I, better known to us as Seti I, was regarded as a great pharaoh by his contemporaries, although his son Ramesses II would claim greater renown. Seti's tomb was discovered by Belzoni in 1817 and was the first to be found to have extensive decorations throughout. The huge alabaster coffin found in the tomb was sold to Sir John Soane, who held a three-day party upon its arrival at his London house, where it can still be seen. Written by the noted Egyptologist Samuel Sharpe (1799-1881), this illustrated description of the intricately decorated sarcophagus was published in 1864. By the time of his death, Sharpe was regarded in Britain as one of the most important figures in helping to popularise all things Egyptian. With the artist and sculptor Joseph Bonomi (1796-1878), who provided the drawings here, he collaborated in organising the Egyptian court at the Crystal Palace in 1854.

The discovery of ancient Egypt and the development of Egyptology are momentous events in intellectual and cultural history. The history of Egyptology is the story of the people, famous and obscure, who constructed the picture of ancient Egypt that we have today, recovered the Egyptian past while inventing it anew, and made a lost civilization comprehensible to generations of enchanted readers and viewers thousands of years later. This, the first of a three-volume survey of the history of Egyptology, follows the fascination with ancient Egypt from antiquity until 1881, tracing the recovery of ancient Egypt and its impact on the human imagination in a saga filled with intriguing mysteries, great discoveries, and scholarly creativity. Wonderful Things affirms that the history of ancient Egypt has proved continually fascinating, but it also demonstrates that the history of Egyptology is no less so. Only by understanding how Egyptology has developed can we truly understand the Egyptian past.

Growing up in Egypt's Nile Delta, Wafaa El Saddik was fascinated by the magnificent pharaonic monuments from an early age, and as a student she dreamed of conducting excavations herself and working in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. At a time when Egyptology was dominated by men, especially those with close connections to the regime, she was determined to succeed, and secured grants to study in Boston, London, and Vienna, eventually becoming the first female general director of the country's most prestigious museum. She launched the first general inventory of the museum's cellars in its more than hundred-year history, in the process discovering long-forgotten treasures, as well as confronting corruption and nepotism in the antiquities administration.In this very personal memoir, she looks back at the history of her country and asks, What happened to Egypt? Where did Nasser's bright new beginning go wrong? Why did Sadat fail to bring peace? Why did the Egyptians allow themselves to be so corrupted by Mubarak? And why was the Muslim Brotherhood able to achieve power? But her first concern remains: How can the ancient legacy of her country truly be protected?

His independent means as the son of a wealthy banker enabled Alexander Henry Rhind (1833 63) to devote his short life to antiquarianism. While reading for the Scottish bar, he studied and investigated Pictish remains, and pressed for the inclusion of archaeological sites in Ordnance Survey maps. On developing tubercular symptoms, he gave up his legal studies and passed the winters from 1855 to 1857 in Egypt, where he made the important studies and excavations recorded in this 1862 book. He focuses on the necropolis of Thebes, and in particular on the unplundered tomb of an eighteenth-dynasty official. Putting his work into the wider context of the history of ancient Egypt and the importance of the city of Thebes, he also describes the reuse of the necropolis ruins as homes for modern Egyptian peasants and as the centre of a thriving trade in antiquities, both genuine and forged."