Recording Village Life presents a close study of over 140 Coptic texts written between 724-756 CE by a single scribe, Aristophanes son of Johannes, of the village Djeme in western Thebes. These texts, which focus primarily on taxation and property concerns, yield a wealth of knowledge about social and economic changes happening at both the community and country-wide levels during the early years of Islamic rule in Egypt. Additionally, they offer a fascinating picture of the scribe's role within this world, illuminating both the practical aspects of his work and the social and professional connections with clients for whom he wrote legal documents. Papyrological analysis of Aristophanes' documents, within the context of the textual record of the village, shows a new and divergent scribal practice that reflects broader trends among his contemporaries: Aristophanes was part of a larger, national system of administrative changes, enacted by the country's Arab rulers in order to better control administrative practices and fiscal policies within the country. Yet Aristophanes' dossier shows him not just as an administrator, revealing details about his life, his role in the community, and the elite networks within which he operated. This unique perspective provides new insights into both the micro-history of an individual's experience of eighth-century Theban village life, and its reflection in the macro social, economic, and political trends in Egypt at this time. This book will prove valuable to scholars of late antique studies, papyrology, philology, early Islamic history, social and economic history, and Egyptology.

Best-selling book on the Scrolls, updated to reflect current scholarship and recent debates The premier Dead Sea Scrolls primer ever since its original publication in 1994, James VanderKam's Dead Sea Scrolls Today won the Biblical Archaeology Society's Publication Award in 1995 for the Best Popular Book on Biblical Archaeology. In this expanded and updated edition the book will continue to illuminate the greatest archaeological find in modern times. While retaining the format, style, and aims of the first edition, the second edition of The Dead Sea Scrolls Today takes into account the full publication of the texts from the caves and the post-1994 debates about the Qumran site, and it contains an additional section regarding information that the Scrolls provide about Second Temple Judaism and the groups prominent at the time. Further, VanderKam has enlarged the bibliographies throughout and changed the phrasing in many places. Finally, quotations of the Scrolls are from the fifth edition of Geza Vermes's translation, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (Penguin, 1997).

Since 2007, the conferences organized under the title 'Broadening Horizons' have provided a regular venue for postgraduates and early career scholars in Ancient Near Eastern Studies. Three volumes present the proceedings of the 6th Broadening Horizons Conference, which took place at the Freie Universitat Berlin from 24-28 June, 2019. The general theme, 'Bridging the Gap: Disciplines, Times, and Spaces in Dialogue', is aimed at encouraging communication and the development of multidisciplinary approaches to the study of material cultures and textual sources. Volume 1 contains 17 papers from Session 1: Entanglement. Material Culture and Written Sources in Dialogue; Session 2: Integrating Sciences in Historical and Archaeological Research; and Session 5: Which Continuity? Evaluating Stability, Transformation, and Change in Transitional Periods.

The eastern frontier of the Roman Empire extended from northern Syria to the western Caucasus, across a remote and desolate region 800 miles from the Aegean. It followed the great Euphrates valley to penetrate the harsh mountains of Armenia Minor and south of the Black Sea, along the Pontic coast to the finally reach the foothills of the Caucasus. Though vast, this terrain has long remained one of the great gaps in our knowledge of the ancient world, barely visited and effectively unknown - until now. Here, Timothy Bruce Mitford offers an account of half a century of research and exploration over sensitive territory, in challenging conditions, to discover the material remains of Rome's last unexplored frontier. The geographical framework introduces frontier installations as they occur: fortresses and forts, roads, bridges, signalling stations, and navigation of the Euphrates. The journey is enriched with observations of consuls and travellers, memories of Turkish and Kurdish villagers, and notes and photographs of a way of life little changed since antiquity. The process of discovery was mainly on foot; staying in villages with local guides, following ancient tracks, and conversing with great numbers of people - provincial and district governors, village elders and teachers, police and jandarma, farmers and shepherds, and everyone in between. This came with its perils and pleasures; encounters with treasure hunters and apparent bandits, tales of saints and caravans, arrests and death threats, bears and wild boars, rafts and fishing, earthquakes, all amid the tumultuous events of the second half of the twentieth century. Richly illustrated with large-scale maps, photographs, and sketches, this is an account of travel and discovery, set against a background of a disappearing world encountered in the long process of academic exploration.

This is a major re-evaluation of the life and legacy of Gertrude Lowthian Bell (1868-1926), the renowned scholar, explorer, writer, archaeologist, and British civil servant. The book examines Gertrude Bell's role in shaping British policy in the Middle East in the first part of the 20th century, her views of the cultures and peoples of the region, and her unusual position as a woman occupying a senior position in the British imperial administration. It focuses particularly on her involvement in Iraq and the part she played in the establishment of the Iraqi monarchy and the Iraqi state. In addition, the book examines her interests in Iraq's ancient past. She was instrumental in drawing up Iraq's first Antiquities Law in 1922 and in the foundation of the Iraq Museum in 1923. Gertrude Bell refused to be constrained by the expectations of the day, and was able to succeed in a man's world of high politics and diplomacy. She remains a controversial figure, however, especially in the context of the founding of the modern state of Iraq. Does she represent a more innocent age when the country was born out of the remnants of the Ottoman Empire, or does she personify the attitudes and decisions that have created today's divided Middle East? The volume's authors bring new insights to these questions.

In this interdisciplinary study, Leire Olabarria examines ancient Egyptian society through the notion of kinship. Drawing on methods from archaeology and sociocultural anthropology, she provides an emic characterisation of ancient kinship that relies on performative aspects of social interaction. Olabarria uses memorial stelae of the First Intermediate Period and the Middle Kingdom (ca.2150-1650 BCE) as her primary evidence. Contextualising these monuments within their social and physical landscapes, she proposes a dynamic way to explore kin groups through sources that have been considered static. The volume offers three case studies of kin groups at the beginning, peak, and decline of their developmental cycles respectively. They demonstrate how ancient Egyptian evidence can be used for cross-cultural comparison of key anthropological topics, such as group formation, patronage, and rites of passage.

The Archaeology Hotspots series offers reader-friendly and engaging narratives of the archaeology in particular countries. Written by archaeological experts with a general reader in mind, each book in the series focuses on what has been found and by whom, what the controversies and scandals have been, ongoing projects, and how it all fits into a broader view of the history of the country. In Archaeology Hotspot Egypt, scholar Julian Heath provides a chronological overview beginning with handaxes left by Homo erectus during the Lower Paleolithic and moving onwards through pharaonic Egypt to finish in the Greco-Roman period. He covers the most interesting finds-including Tutankhamen's tomb and the Rosetta Stone-and profiles major personalities, past and present. Current digs and recent insights on the past are also covered, such as the massive tomb of KV5 and how contemporary scientific techniques are unearthing new information about ancient Egyptian people and animals. The result is an illuminating look at the history, culture, national heritage, and current archaeological news of Egypt-a hotspot of archaeology.

This is the story of the landfill that operated in Jerusalem during the first century CE and served as its garbage dump during the ca. 50-year period that followed Jesus’s crucifixion through to the period that led to the great revolt of the Jews just prior to the city’s destruction. The book presents an extensive investigation of hundreds of thousands of items that were systematically excavated from the thick layers of landfill. It brings together experts who conducted in-depth studies of every sort of material discarded as refuse—ceramic, metal, glass, bone, wood, and more. This research presents an amazing and tantalizing picture of daily life in ancient Jerusalem, and how life was shaped and regulated by strict behavioral rules (halacha). The book also explores why garbage was collected in Jerusalem in so strict a manner and why the landfill operated for only about 50 years. Half a century of garbage from Early Roman–period Jerusalem provides an abundance of new data and new insights into the ideological choices and new religious concepts emerging and developing among those living in Jerusalem at this critical moment. It is an eye-opener for archaeologists, historians, anthropologists, and theologians, as well as for the general reader.

Scribal Repertoires in Egypt from the New Kingdom to the Early Islamic Period deals with the possibility of glimpsing pre-modern and early modern Egyptian scribes, the actual people who produced ancient documents, through the ways in which they organized and wrote those documents. While traditional research has focused on identifying a 'pure' or 'original' text behind the actual manuscripts that have come down to us from pre-modern Egypt, the volume looks instead at variation - different ways of saying the same thing - as a rich source for understanding the complex social and cultural environments in which scribes lived and worked, breaking with the traditional conception of variation in scribal texts as 'free' or indicative of 'corruption'. As such, it presents a novel reconceptualization of scribal variation in pre-modern Egypt from the point of view of contemporary historical sociolinguistics, seeing scribes as agents embedded in particular geographical, temporal, and socio-cultural environments. Introducing to Egyptology concepts such as scribal communities, networks, and repertoires, among others, the authors then apply them to a variety of phenomena, including features of lexicon, grammar, orthography, palaeography, layout, and format. After first presenting this conceptual framework, they demonstrate how it has been applied to better-studied pre-modern societies by drawing upon the well-established domain of scribal variation in pre-modern English, before proceeding to a series of case studies applying these concepts to scribal variation spanning thousands of years, from the languages and writing systems of Pharaonic times, to those of Late Antique and Islamic Egypt.

The Neolithic settlement of Aknashen (Ararat valley, Armenia): excavation seasons 2004-2015 is the first monograph devoted to the Neolithic period in Armenia. The research is based on an Armenian-French project, in which specialists from Canada, Romania, Germany and Greece also participated. The volume concerns the natural environment, material culture and subsistence economy of the populations of the first half of the 6th millennium BC, who established the first sedentary settlements in the alluvial plain of the Araxes river. The thickness of the cultural layer of Aknashen (almost 5m), the extent of the excavated areas and the multidisciplinary nature of the research, confer great importance upon this site for the study of the Neolithic, both in Armenia and in the South Caucasus as a whole. The publication examines the similarities and differences that exist between the sites established in the 6th millennium in the basins of the rivers Araxes (Armenia) and Kura (Georgia and Azerbaijan), as well as parallels with contemporary cultures in Southwest Asia. It also examines questions concerning the characterisation and periodisation of the Neolithic in the central part of the South Caucasus, the emergence of a production economy (pottery, animal husbandry, etc.) and the Neolithisation of this region.

The Neo-Assyrian empire - the first large empire of the ancient world - has attracted a great deal of public attention ever since the spectacular discoveries of its impressive remains in the 19th century. The southwestern part of this empire, located in the lands of the Bible, is archaeologically speaking the best known region in the world, and its history is described in a plethora of texts, including the Hebrew Bible. Using a bottom-up approach, Avraham Faust utilises this unparalleled information to reconstruct the outcomes of the Assyrian conquest of the region and how it impacted the diverse political units and ecological zones that comprised it. In doing so, he draws close attention to the transformations the imperial take-over brought in its wake. His analysis reveals the marginality of the annexed territories in the southwest as the empire focused its activities in small border areas facing its prospering clients. A comparison of this surprising picture to the information available from other parts of the empire suggests that the distance of these provinces from the imperial core is responsible for their fate. This sheds new light on factors influencing imperial expansion, the considerations leading to annexation, and the imperial methods of control, challenging old conventions about the development of the Assyrian empire and its rule. Faust also examines the Assyrian empire within the broader context of ancient Near Eastern imperialism to answer larger questions on the nature of Assyrian domination, the reasons for its harsh treatment of the distant provinces, and the factors influencing the limits of its reach. His findings highlight the historical development of imperial control in antiquity and the ways in which later empires were able to overcome similar limitations, paving the way to much larger and longer-lasting polities.

The Sasanian Empire (3rd -7th centuries) was one of the largest empires of antiquity, stretching from Mesopotamia to modern Pakistan and from Central Asia to the Arabian Peninsula. This mega-empire withstood powerful opponents in the steppe and expanded further in Late Antiquity, whilst the Roman world shrunk in size. Recent research has revealed the reasons for this success, notably population growth in some key territories, economic prosperity and urban development, made possible through investment in agriculture and military infrastructure on a scale unparalleled in the late antique world. Our volume explores the empire's relations with its neighbours and key phenomena which contributed to its wealth and power, from the empire's armed forces to agriculture, trade and treatment of minorities. The latest discoveries, notably major urban foundations, fortifications and irrigations systems, feature prominently. An empire whose might and culture rivalled Rome and foreshadowed the caliphate will be of interest to scholars of the Roman and Islamic world.Challenges our Eurocentric world view by presenting a Near-Eastern empire whose urban culture and military apparatus rivalled that of Rome . Covers the latest discoveries on foundations, fortifications and irrigation systems. Includes case studies on Sasanian frontier walls and urban culture in the Sasanian Empire

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

This volume contains editions of texts, theological, literary, subliterary, and documentary. The theological section includes large fragments of the First Apocalypse of James (5533), an early Christian narrative of conversations between Jesus and his brother, James. The Greek text is otherwise lost and scholars have depended on two often conflicting Coptic versions. The first of seven magical papyri is a second-century exorcism manual (5542), and a series of potted lives of the Successors of Alexander the Great illuminates the history of ancient life-writing before Plutarch (5535). A fragment of commentary on Aristophanes (5536) and five grammatical texts (5537-41) complete Section II. Section III provides a mass of new evidence concerning slavery in the Roman world. The photographs show all the new theological, literary, and subliterary texts, and eleven of the documents.

The Hebrew Scriptures consider the exodus from Egypt to be Israel's formative and foundational event. Indeed, the Bible offers no other explanation for Israel's origin as a people. It is also true that no contemporary record regarding a man named Moses or the Israelites generally, either living in or leaving Egypt has been found. Hence, many biblical scholars and archaeologists take a skeptical attitude, dismissing the exodus from the realm of history. However, the contributors to this volume are convinced that there is an alternative, more positive approach. Using textual and archaeological materials from the ancient Near East in a comparative way, in conjunction with the Torah's narratives and with other biblical texts, the contributors to this volume (specialists in ancient Egypt, ancient Near Eastern culture and history, and biblical studies) maintain that the reports in the Hebrew Bible should not be cavalierly dismissed for ideological reasons but, rather, should be deemed to contain authentic memories.

This book examines a group of twelve ancient Egyptian tombs (ca. 2300 BCE) in the elite Old Kingdom cemetery of Elephantine at Qubbet el-Hawa in modern Aswan. It develops an interdisciplinary approach to the material drawing on methods from art history, archaeology, anthropology, and sociology, including agency theory, the role of style, the reflexive relationship between people and landscape, and the nature of locality and community identity. A careful examination of the architecture, setting, and unique text and image programs of these tombs in context provides a foundation for considering how ancient Egyptian provincial communities bonded to each other, developed shared identities within the broader Egyptian world, and expressed these identities through their personal forms of visual and material culture."

Since 2007, the conferences organized under the title 'Broadening Horizons' have provided a regular venue for postgraduates and early career scholars in Ancient Near Eastern Studies. Three volumes present the proceedings of the 6th Broadening Horizons Conference, which took place at the Freie Universitat Berlin from 24-28 June, 2019. The general theme, 'Bridging the Gap: Disciplines, Times, and Spaces in Dialogue', is aimed at encouraging communication and the development of multidisciplinary approaches to the study of material cultures and textual sources. Volume 3 contains 14 papers from Session 4 - Crossing Boundaries: Connectivity and Interaction; and Session 6 - Landscape and Geography: Human Dynamics and Perceptions.

Omani men carried personal weapons until relatively recent years. Swords and daggers were part of daily life attire and are still worn in social events. Thanks to its political independence, Oman developed unique types of weaponry like the saif sword, which descends from the swords used in the early Islamic period, and the kattara sword that was influenced by the swordsmanship tradition of East Africa. A central role is played by the curved dagger that, common throughout the region, has a special declination in the Omani khanjar. Traditional Omani weaponry includes also the characteristic round terrs shields and the small jertz and qaddum axes, used in the Musandam Peninsula and in the Wahiba sands. This book describes all these main types of Omani edged weapons, their origin, structure and accessories, with the support of a large amount of illustrations and constant reference to specimens from museums and private collections in Oman. The book includes also a long and detailed appendix about one of the most exciting discoveries by the Ministry of Heritage and Tourism, the so-called Desert Lord of Sinaw, buried almost two thousand years ago with a long iron sword and two iron daggers.

By day, young Gilbert Bagnani studied archaeology in Greece, but by night he socialised with the elite of Athenian society. Secretly writing for the Morning Post in London, he witnessed both antebellum Athens in 1921 and the catastrophic collapse of Christian civilisation in western Anatolia in 1922. While there have been many accounts by refugees of the disastrous flight from Smyrna, few have been written from the perspective of the west side of the Aegean. The flood of a million refugees to Greece brought in its wake a military coup in Athens, the exile of the Greek royal family and the execution or imprisonment of politicians, whom Gilbert knew. Gilbert’s weekly letters to his mother in Rome reveal his Odyssey-like adventures on a voyage of discovery through the origins of western civilisation. As an archaeologist in Greece, he travelled through time seeing history repeat itself: Minoan Knossos, Byzantine Constantinople and Ottoman Smyrna were all violently destroyed, but the survivors escaped to the new worlds of Mycenaean Greece, Renaissance Venice and modern Greece. At Smyrna in the twentieth century, history was written not only by the victors but was also recorded by the victims. At the same time, however, the twentieth century itself was so filled with reports of ethnic cleansings on such a scale that the reports brutalized the humanity of the supposedly civilized people reading about them, and the tragedy of Smyrna disappeared from public awareness between the cataclysmic upheavals of the First and Second World Wars.

This book examines the interplay between astronomy and dynastic power in the course of ancient Egyptian history, focusing on the fundamental role of astronomy in the creation of the pyramids and the monumental temple and burial complexes. Bringing to bear the analytical tools of archaeoastronomy, a set of techniques and methods that enable modern scholars to better understand the thought, religion, and science of early civilizations, Giulio Magli provides in-depth analyses of the pyramid complexes at Giza, Abusir, Saqqara, and Dahshur, as well as of the Early Dynastic necropolis at Abydos and the magnificent new Kingdom Theban temples. Using a variety of data retrieved from study of the sky and measurements of the buildings, he reconstructs the visual, symbolic, and spiritual world of the ancient Egyptians and thereby establishes an intimate relationship among celestial cycles, topography, and architecture. He also shows how they were deployed in the ideology of the pharaoh's power in the course of Egyptian history.

European adventurers began exploring Palmyra's priceless Roman ruins in the 17th century, but it wasn't until the advent of photography that the public became aware of its scale and majesty. In 1885, the sight of Palmyra astounded members of the Wolfe Expedition as they journeyed home from Mesopotamia. The group's photographer, John Henry Haynes, documented the monumental temples, tombs and colonnades in more than a hundred invaluable images. Since then, Haynes and his work have largely been forgotten, and the forces of the self-styled Islamic State have destroyed the key monuments of this world-renowned site, including the glorious Temple of Bel. Haynes's images of Palmyra - published here for the first time - are all the more poignant. The Syrian city of Palmyra - known as ‘the Pearl of the Desert’ - was one of the most important cultural centres of the ancient world. A key stop on the Silk Road, it was a vital link between the East and the West, and a prize fought over by successive conquering armies.

This volume presents a study of the tomb of Kha-em-hat TT 57 at Qurna, West Luxor, which dates back to the 18th Dynasty - the reign of King Amenhotep III. It is considered one of the most important Egyptian tomb discoveries, containing rare scenes and revealing development of the religious rituals of the time. The tomb is still in very good condition and today is open to visitors.

The Family of Pa-di-Amun-neb-nesut-tawy from Thebes (TT 414) revisited provides fresh material about the identity of one of the key figures of the family that reused the Saite tomb of Ankh-Hor (TT 414) in the Asasif from the 4th century BCE onwards. It is the woman Kalutj/Nes-Khonsu, who was previously listed in the genealogical register of TT 414 as Pa-di-Amun-neb-nesut-tawy's daughter and wife of one of his sons, Hor. By examining objects found by the agents of the consuls in the 19th century CE and those found by the Austrian mission in the 1970s in TT 414 and in wider Theban contexts, the authors are able to identify Kalutj/Nes-Khonsu, wife of Hor, as another, until now overlooked individual, separate from his sister with the same name. The examination of the funerary assemblage of Kalutj/Nes-Khonsu and of objects belonging to her husband, daughter and sons reveals not only details of Late Dynastic and Ptolemaic burial customs in Thebes but also additional information on the priesthood of Khonsu and of the sacred baboons in this era. This new identification of a previously overlooked person, the mistress of the house and daughter of the first prophet of Amun, Kalutj/Nes-Khonsu (G108 + G137), demonstrates that the finds from TT 414 are still far from being processed in their totality. This material has the potential to provide answers to some of the open questions regarding Late Dynastic/Ptolemaic Thebes and to contextualise funerary assemblages.

In the half-century between 1831 and 1881 three massive obelisks left Egypt for new lands. Prior to these journeys, the last large obelisk moved was the Vatican obelisk in 1586 - one of the great engineering achievements of the Renaissance. Roman emperors moved more than a dozen, but left no records of how they did it. The nineteenth-century engineers entrusted with transporting the obelisks across oceans had to invent new methods, and they were far from certain that they would work. As the three obelisks, bound for Paris, London and New York, sailed towards their new homes, the world held its breath. Newspapers reported the obelisks' daily progress, complete with dramatic illustrations of the heroic deeds of the engineers and crews struggling under nearly impossible conditions. When the obelisks finally arrived safely in their new homes, bands played Cleopatra's Needle Waltz and silver obelisk pencils dangled from fashionable ladies' necks. This turbulent era, caught up in obelisk mania, is recreated by Bob Brier in all its glory. Amid astounding tales of engineering dexterity and naval endurance, the individuals involved in transporting the obelisks and receiving them in their future homes are brought to life through their letters and diaries, newspaper articles and illustrations. Written by a renowned Egyptologist and author, this compelling book will fascinate all those interested in Egypt, its iconic monuments and the history of great endeavour.