This collection of papers orignally given at a 2008 conference at Alexandria University presents recent archaeological work on the Lake Mareotis region of Alexandria, of considerable importance in antiquity as a hub of economic activity and of transport links. The volume brings together recent results from several different national expeditions and research projects in the region, including the Lake Mareotis Research Project, established jointly by the departments of Maritime Archaeology at Southampton and Alexandria Universities, and the Department of Underwater Antiquities Alexandria.

This highly original study locates the question of scribes and scribal schools in monarchic Judah in a socio-archaeological context. It departs from earlier studies by assigning priority to interpreting archaeological data within a broad interdisciplinary framework before trying to assess biblical and epigraphic sources. The book provides an analysis of data on settlement, public works, and luxury items in order to produce an archaeologically based picture of the development of state level administrative systems in Judah. The study questions the consensus that the Judahite monarchy became a state at some point in the tenth century BCE. The evidence for the increase in population, building, production, centralization and specialization in the eighth century suggests that Judah did not function as a state before the eighth century BCE. This incisive study challenges the assumption of widespread literacy and the traditional picture of the development of the Judahite monarchy. This volume is a reprint of the 1991 edition with a new preface by Keith W. Whitelam setting the work in the context of recent debates on the history of ancient Israel.

"Peoples of the Sea" is, in some sense, the culmination of the series "Ages in Chaos." In this volume the erroneous time shift of classical history reaches its maximum span - 800 years With carefully documented evidence and indisputable arguments, Velikovsky places Ramses III firmly into the 4th century B.C. thereby solving, once and for all, numerous conundrums that historians had been confronted with in the past. He unveils the surprising identity of the so-called "Peoples of the Sea," clarifies the role of the Philistines and solves the enigma of the Dynasty of Priests. This volume leads Velikovsky's revised chronology up to the time of Alexander where it links-up with the records of classical chronology. In an extensive supplement Velikovsky delves into the fundamental question of how such a dramatic shift in chronology could have come about. Analyzing the main pillars of Egyptian chronology, he points out where the most dramatic mistakes were made and addresses the misunderstanding underlying the "astronomical chronology." In a further supplement he discusses the very interesting conclusions that can be drawn from radiocarbon testing on Egyptian (archeological) finds.

In this study the author focuses on trade and markets in New Kingdom, Egypt. Contents: 1) Introduction and overview of internal exchange systems and the Egyptian economy; 2) Theoretical approaches to the Egyptian economy; 3) Local markets; 4) Economic transactions of movable goods (in particular relation to Thebes; 5) The 'Swtyw' ('traders'; 6) Real estate and land exchange; 7) Trade in slaves.

The building process of the Egyptian pyramids has been the subject of many publications. However, a thorough review of this literature reveals that only certain aspects of this process have been studied in isolation, without taking into account the interaction between various activities involved, such as quarrying, transportation and buThe building process of the Egyptian pyramids has been the subject of many publications. However, a thorough review of this literature reveals that only certain aspects of this process have been studied in isolation, without taking into account the interaction between various activities involved, such as quarrying, transportation and building and without a sound quantitative basis. The present study aims at filling this gap by means of an integrated mathematical model.

This volume reports on the use of conventional X-ray and CT-scanning to investigate a sample of 127 mummified animals in British museums. It presents a methodology for this relatively new field of study, showing how radiographic technologies can be used to identify species, the age and sex of the animal, body cavity contents, pathology and cause of death, as well as aspects of the mummification process.

"In Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit Jodi Magness unearths 'footprints' buried in both archaeological and literary evidence to shed new light on Jewish daily life in Palestine from the mid-first century b.c.e. to 70 c.e. the time and place of Jesus' life and ministry. Magness analyzes recent archaeological discoveries from such sites as Qumran and Masada together with a host of period texts, including the New Testament, the works of Josephus, and rabbinic teachings. Layering all these sources together, she reconstructs in detail a fascinating variety of everyday activities dining customs, Sabbath observance, fasting, toilet habits, burial customs, and more" -- BACK COVER.

Papers from a seminar held at the University of Copenhagen in September 2006. Contents: A New Look at the Conception of the Human Being in Ancient Egypt (John Gee); 2) Between Identity and Agency in Ancient Egyptian Ritual (Harold M. Hays); 3) Material Agency, Attribution and Experience of Agency in Ancient Egypt: The case of New Kingdom private temple statues (Annette Kjolby); 4) Self-perception and Self-assertion in the Portrait of Senwosret III: New methods for reading a face ((Maya Muller); 5) Taking Phenomenology to Heart: Some heuristic remarks on studying ancient Egyptian embodied experience (Rune Nyord); 6) Anger and Agency: The role of the emotions in Demotic and earlier narratives (John Tait); 7) Time and Space in Ancient Egypt: The importance of the creation of abstraction (David A. Warburton); Index of Egyptian and Greek words and expressions."

This volume collates and analyses petroglyphs from the eastern desert of Egypt. Images of wild animals, domestic animals, anthropoids and boats, together with geometric patterns, are classified and assessed by statistical means to reach conclusions about the preferences of the artists in terms of subject matter, style, context and geographical distribution. The dataset is compared with petroglyphs from the Nile Valley and further afield to establish possible connections, contacts and influences. Issues of dating and meaning are also addressed.

This volume focuses on the reconstruction of household organization during the Iron II period at Tell Halif. It centers in particular on one four-room, pillared-type building located in Area F7 of Field IV and on its remains, which were sealed in a massive destruction that eclipsed the site in the late eighth century B.C.E. This study was first prepared as a Ph.D. dissertation for the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Arizona (Hardin 2001) and has since been amplified and embellished by further research. Published here are the results of research deliberately designed by the author to provide for more complete recovery and detailed recording in the field of all artifacts and other remains within a special refined three-dimensional grid matrix. These data in turn established a framework for studying the formation processes active on the materials and for conducting a spatial analysis of the assemblages in the building. Along with developing ethnographic and ethnoarchaeological inferences, these techniques are used to identify activities, activity areas, and social organization related to the building, ultimately defining an "archaeological household" consisting of the pillared dwelling and its occupants. Finally, these conclusions are also related to reconstructions of the Iron II-period household suggested by Hebrew Bible sources.

The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Archaeology brings together expert work by leading scholars of the archaeology of Early Christianity and the Roman world in the Mediterranean and surrounding regions. The thirty-four contributions to this volume survey Christian material culture and ground the history, culture, and society of the first seven centuries of Christianity in archaeological method, theory, and research. The essays emphasize the link between archaeological fieldwork, methods, and regional and national traditions in constructing our knowledge of the Early Church and Christian communities within the context of the ancient Mediterranean, Near East, and Europe. Three sweeping introductory essays provide historical perspectives on the archaeology of the Early Christian world. These are followed by a series of topical treatments that focus on monuments and environments ranging from Christian churches to catacombs, martyria, and baths, as well as classes of objects of religious significance such as ceramics, lamps, and icons. Finally, the volume locates the archaeology of the Early Christian world in fifteen regional studies stretching from Britain to Persia, highlighting the unique historical contexts that have shaped scholarly discussion across time and space. The thorough, carefully-researched essays offer the most intensive, state-of-the-art treatment of recent research into the archaeology of Early Christianity available.

This monograph explores the unity of the modern concepts of magic and science in Egyptian medicine. After an initial chapter analysing the types of sources with which any study of this subject must engage, the author looks at how the Egyptians conceptualised magic, how Egyptian doctors arrived at diagnoses, and at treatments, including medicines, spells and amulets.

This study investigates the drivers for the development of the elite Late Period tombs of the necropoleis of Memphis. It studies their conceptual basis in the context of the social and political situation of the Late Period. It examines the landscape of Memphis and explores the geographic, geological and man-made features that encouraged the creation of a sacred landscape with a view to discovering what features made this a desirable place for the building of tombs and why Late Period clusters of tombs were built in some parts of that landscape but not in others; it also considers the significance of their alignment. It sets out to discover what religious, social or ancestral factors made the elite choose the location of the individual tombs, what determined their structure and how they relate to older as well as contemporary structures. Finally, the reason for the positions of the different burial grounds of Memphis, and the interrelation between them, is explored in order to establish the socio-political factors influencing that choice.

In his book "Ramses II and His Time," Immanuel Velikovsky continues his reconstruction of ancient history. This volume covers the best-known of old Egypt's pharaohs, Ramses II. Velikovsky points out how little we know about this famous ruler. His revised chronology places Ramses II firmly into the 7th century B.C. and not, as we have been led to believe, hundreds of years earlier in the 13th century B.C.. Ramses II's adversary was thus none other than Nebuchadnezzar. We are made privy to fascinating personal details about this great Chaldean ruler, whose autobiography Velikovsky was able to locate. As in the first part of the series "Ages in Chaos," this volume unearths a string of erroneous theories and dismisses as pure fantasy several other aspects of the traditional written history concerning the ancient world. We learn, for example, that the so-called Hittite Empire is an historical invention and, in another critical paragraph, Velikovsky leads us the to the proper understanding of the Bronze- and Iron Ages. In the extensive supplement, Velikovsky deals with the age-calculating method of radiocarbon dating and its surprising connections to his own theories.

This study investigates identity and concepts of Egyptian-ness in the sharply contrasting worlds of New Kingdom and Coptic Egypt. Horbury analyses the effects of official belief systems on the lives and identities of ordinary Egyptians, using letters as the primary source material, as well as the built environment. In particular the role of the strong New Kingdom state is examined, as is the effect of the official rejection of the Pharaonic past in the Coptic period.

This thesis, sure to prove controversial, examines the geometry of Old Kingdom Royal tomb architecture, arguing for far greater levels of mathematical sophistication than hitherto admitted. Adding his own contribution to the Black Athena debate, Lightbody also claims that the debts in measurement, geometry and mathematics which the Greeks owe to the Egyptians has also not been fully recognised, not least due to an overfocusing on philological evidence.

Although Egyptian amphorae containing wine were labelled, these labels never state whether the wine inside was red or white. Using analysis of residue samples from amphorae this study determines what kind's of wine could be covered by this generic labelling, and also investigates a further product called shedeh, which transpired to be a more complex wine. The study also contains a well-illustrated cultural overview of wine in Ancient Egypt, and a comprehensive bibliography.

A handmade pottery with incised decoration found in small quantities amongst the wheelmade waresin the Nile Valley between the Fifth and the First Cataract and in the Eastern Desert. Discussses the historical background, the clay, the provenance suggested by the chemical inclusions, use indicated by lipid residues, and the cultural origins of the pots.

An important survey of the dental health of Ancient Egyptians, investigating the effects of diet and living conditions. Miller uses as evidence a selection of skulls from the Duckwoth collection in Cambridge and from the Department of Palaeopathology at the British Museum, ranging in date from the Neolithic (c.4000 BC) to the Greek period (c.300 BC). The study aims to trace trends in dental health through this period and relate findings to documentary and archaeological evidence for changes in diet.

Using Gerasa and Dura Europos as case studies this book analyses changes in spatial patterns in the Late Antique polis. It seeks to determine how much spatial change should be linked to religious change, as opposed, say to the decline of civic administration or economic change. March finds that enclosure of space is the most readily apparent feature of the Late Antique spatial transformation and that this is characteristic of an early Christian desire to seperate the sacred and the profane.

This volume is the first in a planned series of reports on the investigations of the Lahav Research Project (LRP) at Tell Halif, located near Kibbutz Lahav in southern Israel. The LRP has focused widely on stratigraphic, environmental, and ethnographic problems related to the history of settlement at Tell Halif and in its immediate surroundings, from prehistoric through modern times. It is fitting that this LRP series begins by focusing on remains from Site 101, which was the first location excavated by the team in 1973. This initial effort involved investigation of a warren of shallow caves that had been exposed by efforts to widen the road into the kibbutz. In this volume, J. P. Dessel reports on the excavation undertaken at Site 101 during Phase II and is also supplemented by his later research. The excavation itself was guided throughout by Dessel's determination to require the total retrieval of all ceramic remains. It was his rigorous follow-through on all details involved in the analysis of materials that produced the pioneering results herein presented. Readers will find the book important for the archaeology and history of the southern Levant in the 4th millennium B.C.E. as well as for connections between the Levant and surrounding regions in that era.

This work investigates the ways in which six Syro-Palestinian deities - Baal, Reshef, Hauron, Anat, Astarte and Qadesh - were integrated into the Egyptian pantheon in three contexts: royal scenes, personal religion and amalgamation with Egyptian indigenous deities. Its methodology is drawn from two anthropological theories - the 'tributary relationship', and 'translative adaptation'.

This study of the beginnings of Christian art looks at the period when Christianity co-existed alongside paganism, and identifies juxtapositions of paganism in Christian art. Chapters discuss iconography and ritual space, architecture, and the re-use of monuments and other artworks. Throughout Suzawa uses the theological concept of syncretism to analyse these juxtapositions.

This volume celebrates the contribution of Diana V. Edelman to the field and celebrates her personally as researcher, teacher, mentor, colleague, and mastermind of new research paths and groups. It salutes her unconventional, constantly thinking and rethinking outside the box and her challenging of established consensuses. It includes essays addressing biblical themes and texts, archaeological fieldwork, historical method, social memory and reception history. Contributors include Yairah Amit, James Anderson, Bob Becking, Ehud Ben Zvi, Kare Berge, Anne Fitzpatrick-McKinley, Susanne Gillmayr-Bucher, Lester L. Grabbe, Philippe Guillaume, David Hamidovic, Lowell K. Handy, Maria Hausl, Kristin Joachimsen, Christoph Levin, Aren M. Maeir, Lynette Mitchell, Reinhard Muller, Jorunn Okland, Daniel Pioske, Thomas Romer, Benedetta Rossi, Cynthia Shafer-Elliott, Jason Silverman, Steinar Skarpnes, Pauline A. Viviano, Anne-Mareike Wetter.