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.

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."

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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 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.

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.

In 2002, an ancient limestone box, called the James Ossuary, was trumpeted across the world's front pages as the first material evidence of the existence of Jesus Christ. Today it is exhibit number one in a forgery trial that could lead to the incarceration of some very wealthy men and embarrass major international institutions, including the British Museum and Sotheby's. Set in Israel, with its 20,000 archaeological digs crammed with Biblical-era artefacts, and full of colourful characters - scholars, evangelicals, detectives and millionaire collectors - Unholy Business tells the incredible story of what the Israeli authorities have called 'the fraud of the century'. This real-life thriller about the high-stakes world of biblical antiquities takes the reader into the murky world of Holy Land relic dealing, from the back alleys of Jerusalem's Old City to London and New York's Fifth Avenue, and reveals Biblical archaeology as it is pulled apart by religious believers on one side and scientists on the other. Nina Burleigh is a staff writer for People magazine and has 22 years of writing and reporting experience for the Associated Press, the Chicago Tribune and Time. She has spent a considerable amount of time in the Middle East and is the author of The Stranger and the Statesman, A Very Private Woman and Mirage.

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.

In this book, Professor Joseph Davidovits explains the intriguing theory that made him famous. He shows how the Pyramids were built by using re-agglomerated stone (a natural limestone treated like a concrete), and not with huge carved blocks, hauled on fragile ramps. Archaeology bears him out, as well as hieroglyphic texts, scientific analysis, religious and historical facts. Here we finally have the first complete presentation on how and why the Egyptian pyramids were built. We discover its brilliant creator, the great scribe and architect, Imhotep. Joseph Davidovits sweeps aside the conventional image which cripples Egyptology and delivers a captivating and surprising view of Egyptian civilisation. He charts the rise of this technology, its apogee with the Pyramids at Giza, and the decline. Everything is logical and brilliant, everything fits into place. Chapter by chapter, the revelations are sensational, especially when Joseph Davidovits explains why the pharaohs stopped building great pyramids because of an over-exploitation of raw materials and a likely environmental disaster. We understand why Cheops and Ramses II represent two Egyptian civilisations completely different in their beliefs. On the one hand, the God Khnum mandates Cheops to build his pyramid in agglomerated stone, while on the other hand, the God Amun orders Ramses to carve stone for the temples of Luxor and Karnak. 20 years after the best seller book: The Pyramids: an enigma solved, after 20 years of new research, and new discoveries, you will understand why the theory is more alive than ever, why more and more scientists and archaeologists agree, simply because it is the truth.

This book presents a new analysis of the organization, structure and changes of the pharaonic state through three millennia of its history. Moreno Garcia sheds new light on this topic by bringing to bear recent developments in state theory and archaeology, especially comparative study of the structure of ancient states and empires. The role played by pharaonic Egypt in new studies often reiterates old views about the stability, conservatism and 'exceptionalism' of Egyptian kingship, which supposedly remained the same across the Bronze and Iron Ages. Ancient Egypt shared many parallels with other Bronze and Iron Age societies as can be shown by an analysis of the structure of the state, of the limits of royal power, of the authority of local but neglected micro-powers (such as provincial potentates and wealthy non-elite), and of the circulation and control of wealth. Furthermore, Egypt experienced deep changes in its social, economic, political and territorial organization during its history, thus making the land of the pharaohs an ideal arena in which to test applications of models of governments and to define the dynamics that rule societies on the longue duree. When seen through these new perspectives, the pharaonic monarchies appear less exceptional than previously thought, and more dependent on the balance of power, on their capacity to control the kingdom's resources and on the changing geopolitical conditions of their time.

The concepts of territory and territoriality are analysed on the basis of anthropological and archaeological data. It is assumed that territory and territoriality are more complex concepts than simple space occupation. For the case of Egypt in the Old Kingdom, the author of this volume considers different variables related to the ideology and to the socio-political and economic systems of the Egyptian state. Its consolidation, the royal power legitimisation and that of the elite, and the socio-political and economic system are here considered from their unification in the Early Dynastic period, to the Old Kingdom, when the state expanded and its political and ideological maturity was achieved.

In this study the author approaches the realm of private religion in Egypt some 3,300 years ago. The two broad research questions that frame this study are: What was the structure of the private religious landscape at Amarna (Central Egypt, on the Nile), and what were the ideas that shaped this landscape? The starting point is a corpus of objects and structures from settlement remains at one site, Amarna, the location of Egypts capital for a brief period (c.350 330 BCE) towards the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty.

In the course of the past century, excavations in Palestine have turned up large numbers of oil lamps. This first volume in a planned catalogue raisonne, summarizes the typological development of Palestinian oil lamps from the earliest such items of the Late Chalcolithic period onward, and their historical, cultural, and political contexts. The abundance and great variety of the material make this, a difficult undertakingparticularly for the oil lamps of the earlier periods dealt with in the present volume. Detailed descriptions of many items in the collections of the Israel Antiquities Authority, as well as of recorded oil lamps from other sites and neighboring regions, serve here as a basis for generalizations and conclusions.

Social Aspects of Ancient Egyptian Domestic Architecture Aby Aikaterini Koltsida How important is the study of the domestic architecture of a society in order to reveal the everyday life of its inhabitants? How significant is the space within which people live and interact in order to understand the structure and function of a family? How much does the space influence the relationships developed among the people living under the same roof? Is there a characteristic house plan to cover the everyday basic needs of an ancient Egyptian? In this study, the author looks at the function and use of a domestic unit and the everyday life of its occupants.

This work examines in detail a specific group of inscribed material from the Memphite necropolis. The material dates to the late Old Kingdom- Herakleopolitan Period, and comes from tombs belonging to officials of various ranks and social standing. Some of the stelae and other inscribed fragments, offering tables, side pieces, and blocks have been published, while others are looked at here for the first time. This book, however, is the first work to bring all this material together as comprehensively as possible in order to fully assess its extent and importance. It investigates the distribution of the Herakleopolitan Period cemeteries in the vast necropolis of Memphis; analyses each individual cemetery and its development through this period; and explores the architectural remains of the chapels of the period to cast light on their design. A major focus is the examination of the tomb stelae, their orientation, development, and their inscriptions...