In Dhofar, the southern Governorate of the Sultanate of Oman, the deep canyons cutting the Nejd plateau once flowed with perennial rivers, feeding wetland environments, forests, and grasslands across the now desiccated interior. The first peoples of Oman flourished along these waterways, drawn to the freshwater springs and abundant game, as well as the myriad chert outcrops with which to fashion their hunting implements and other tools. The landscapes of the Nejd Plateau are a natural museum of human prehistory, covered in carpets of chipped stone debris. The archaeological evidence presented in this work encompasses the cultural remains of over a million years of successive human occupations, from the Lower Palaeolithic to the Late Palaeolithic. Once considered an evolutionary backwater or merely a migratory way station, the archaeology of Dhofar requires a fundamental reconsideration of the role of Southern Arabia in the origin and dispersal of our species.

Amazing discoveries of over 35 major links between the enigmatic and beautiful 'Amarna Period' of Pharoah Akhenaten and the Biblical Exodus, proving beyond any reasonable doubt that the Exodus actually happened, and who the relevant Pharoahs were, together with astounding photos and hundreds of translated ancient texts as well as mummy analyses which exactly match the Biblical account in detail and explain the likely motivations and reasons for most of the strange but vitally significant phenomena and features. Other writers have puzzled over Akhenaten's missing army and gold as well as his monotheism, together with his father's (Amenhotep III) loss of a firstborn heir... but these things are just the starting point for solid answers in this astounding collection of discoveries. The style of the book is progressive, for the benefit of those less familiar with the topic, whilst providing more scholarly detail as the book progresses.

In this book, Philip Zhakevich examines the technology of writing as it existed in the southern Levant during the Iron Age II period, after the alphabetic writing system had fully taken root in the region. Using the Hebrew Bible as its corpus and focusing on a set of Hebrew terms that designated writing surfaces and instruments, this study synthesizes the semantic data of the Bible with the archeological and art-historical evidence for writing in ancient Israel. The bulk of this work comprises an in-depth lexicographical analysis of Biblical Hebrew terms related to Israel's writing technology. Employing comparative Semitics, lexical semantics, and archaeology, Zhakevich provides a thorough analysis of the origins of the relevant terms; their use in the biblical text, Ben Sira, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and ancient Hebrew inscriptions; and their translation in the Septuagint and other ancient versions. The final chapter evaluates Israel's writing practices in light of those of the ancient world, concluding that Israel's most common form of writing (i.e., writing with ink on ostraca and papyrus) is Egyptian in origin and was introduced into Canaan during the New Kingdom. Comprehensive and original in its scope, Scribal Tools in Ancient Israel is a landmark contribution to our knowledge of scribes and scribal practices in ancient Israel. Students and scholars interested in language and literacy in the first-millennium Levant in particular will profit from this volume.

Rural Cult Centres in the Hauran: Part of the broader network of the Near East (100 BC-AD 300) challenges earlier scholars' emphasis on the role played by local identities and Romanisation in religion and religious architecture in the Roman Empire through the first comprehensive multidisciplinary analysis of rural cult centres in the Hauran (southern Syria) from the pre-Roman to the Roman period. The Hauran is an interesting and revealing area of study because it has been a geographical cross-point between different cultures over time. Inspired by recent theories on interconnectivity and globalisation, the monograph argues that cult centres, and the Hauran itself, are part of a human network at a macro level on the basis of analysis of archaeological, architectural, sculptural and epigraphic evidence and landscape. As a result of this multi-disciplinary approach, the text also re-assesses the social meaning of these sanctuaries, discusses the identity of the elite group that contributed financially to the building of sanctuaries, and attempts to reconstruct ritual and economic activities in cult centres. This book re-evaluates the significance of contacts between the elite of the Hauran and other cultures of the Near East in shaping cult sites; it includes a first catalogue of rural cult centres of the Hauran in the appendix.

Catalog of bronze figures in the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology. The museum houses 510 statuettes or fragments of statuettes made of bronze. Most of them represent Egyptian gods, but there are also Hellenistic and Roman figures.

Winifred Lamb was a pioneering archaeologist in the Aegean and Anatolia. She studied classics at Newnham College, Cambridge, and subsequently served in naval intelligence alongside J. D. Beazley during the final stages of the First World War. As war drew to a close, Sydney Cockerell, Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, invited Lamb to be the honorary keeper of Greek antiquities. Over the next 40 years she created a prehistoric gallery, marking the university's contribution to excavations in the Aegean, and developed the museum's holdings of classical bronzes and Athenian figure-decorated pottery. Lamb formed a parallel career excavating in the Aegean. She was admitted as a student of the British School at Athens and served as assistant director on the Mycenae excavations under Alan Wace and Carl Blegen. After further work at Sparta and on prehistoric mounds in Macedonia, Lamb identified and excavated a major Bronze Age site at Thermi on Lesbos. She conducted a brief excavation on Chios before directing a major project at Kusura in Turkey. She was recruited for the Turkish language section of the BBC during the Second World War, and after the cessation of hostilities took an active part in the creation of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara.

Perspectives on materiality in ancient Egypt - agency, cultural reproduction and change expresses the authors' broad theoretical interest on materiality and how it helps us to understand the crucial role of material culture in ancient Egyptian society in a more complex way. In the volume, mainly young scholars in Brazil, France, Germany and the UK approach the potential of materiality based on several case studies covering a wide range of topics such as Egyptian art, recent perspectives on sex and gender, hierarchies, and the materiality of textual sources and images. The idea of gathering young scholars to discuss 'materiality' first took place in the form of a colloquium organised in Sao Paulo, but soon after became a more encompassing project aspiring to produce a publication. The editors' aimed to include researchers from various places, which makes the volume a materialisation of fruitful collaborations between individuals coming from different scholarly traditions. The combination of different ways of looking at the ancient material culture can hopefully contribute to the renovation of theory and practice in Egyptology. The editors believe that the emphasis on diversity- of background histories, national traditions and mind-sets-is one the main elements that can be used to boost new perspectives in a connected, globalised and hopefully less unequal world.

On the Origins of the Cartouche and Encircling Symbolism in Old Kingdom Pyramids is a treatise on the subject of encircling symbolism in pharaonic monumental tomb architecture. The study focuses on the Early Dynastic Period and the Old Kingdom of ancient Egypt; from the first dynasty through the sixth. During that time, encircling symbolism was developed most significantly and became most influential. The cartouche also became the principal symbol of the pharaoh for the first time. This work demonstrates how the development of the cartouche was closely related to the monumental encircling symbolism incorporated into the architectural designs of the Old Kingdom pyramids. By employing a new architectural style, the pyramid, and a new iconographic symbol, the cartouche, the pharaoh sought to elevate his status above that of the members of his powerful court. These iconic new emblems emphasized and protected the pharaoh in life, and were retained in the afterlife. By studying the available evidence, the new and meaningful link between the two artistic media; iconographic and architectural, is catalogued, understood, and traced out through time.

Introduction - The Nabataeans in focus (Laila Nehme & Lucy Wadeson); 1) Landscapes north of Petra: the Petra Area and Wadi Silaysil Survey (Brown University Petra Archaeological Project, 2010-2011) (Susan E. Alcock & Alex R. Knodell); 2) Nabataean or Late Roman? Reconsidering the date of the built sections and milestones along the Petra-Gaza road (Chaim Ben David); 3) Reinventing the sacred: from shrine to monastery at Jabal Harun (Zbigniew T. Fiema, ); 4) Dating the early phases under the temenos of the Qa r al-Bint at Petra (F. Renel, M. Mouton, C. Auge, C. Gauthier, C. Hatte, J-F. Saliege & A. Zazzo); 5) A Nabataean shrine to Isis in Wadi Abu Ullayqah, in the south-west of Petra (Marie-Jeanne Roche); 6) The palaces of the Nabataean kings at Petra (Stephan G. Schmid, Piotr Bienkowski, Zbigniew T. Fiema & Bernhard Kolb); 7) The funerary landscape of Petra: results from a new study (Lucy Wadeson); 8) The International Aslah Project, Petra: new research and new questions (Robert Wenning in cooperation with Laurent Gorgerat).

Of the Nubian Archaeological Campaigns responding to the construction of the Aswan High Dam, the survey and excavations carried out within Sudanese Nubia represent the most substantial achievement of the larger enterprise. Many components of the larger project of the UNESCO - Sudan Antiquities Service Survey have been published, in addition to the reports of a number of other major projects assigned separate concessions within the region. However, the results of one major element, the Archaeological Survey of Sudanese Nubia (ASSN) between the Second Cataract and the Dal Cataract remain largely unpublished. This volume, focusing on the pharaonic sites, is the first of a series which aims to bring to publication the records of the ASSN. These records represent a major body of data relating to a region largely now lost to flooding. This is also a region of very considerable importance for understanding the archaeology and history of Nubia more generally, not least in relation to the still often poorly understood relationships between Lower Nubia to the north and the surviving areas of Middle and Upper Nubia, to the south. The ASSN project fieldwork was undertaken over six years between 1963 and 1969, investigating c.130km of the river valley between Gemai, at the south end of the Second Cataract, and Dal.

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.

Advocates of the established hypotheses on the origins of the Synoptic gospels and their interrelationships (the Synoptic Problem), and especially those defending or contesting the existence of the "source" (Q), are increasingly being called upon to justify their position with reference to ancient media practices. Still others go so far as to claim that ancient media realities force a radical rethinking of the whole project of Synoptic source criticism, and they question whether traditional documentary approaches remain valid at all. This debate has been hampered to date by the patchy reception of research on ancient media in Synoptic scholarship. Seeking to rectify this problem, Alan Kirk here mounts a defense, grounded in the practices of memory and manuscript transmission in the Roman world, of the Two Document Hypothesis. He shows how ancient media/memory approaches in fact offer new leverage on classic research problems in scholarship on the Synoptic Gospels, and that they have the potential to break the current impasse in the Synoptic Problem. The results of his analysis open up new insights to the early reception and scribal transmission of the Jesus tradition and cast new light on some long-conflicted questions in Christian origins.

This congress volume of the Minerva Center for the Relations between Israel and Aram in Biblical Times combines theoretical approaches to historical research on autonomy or independence in ancient cultures and then presents articles which study the subject using Aram and Israel in antiquity as examples. These articles show clearly how strongly Syria and Palestine were linked to one another and how they constituted one single cultural region which was connected by its economy, politics, language, religion, and culture.

For the past hundred years, much has been written about the early editions of Christian texts discovered in the region that was once Roman Egypt. Scholars have cited these papyrus manuscripts--containing the Bible and other Christian works--as evidence of Christianity's presence in that historic area during the first three centuries AD. In "Early Christian Books in Egypt," distinguished papyrologist Roger Bagnall shows that a great deal of this discussion and scholarship has been misdirected, biased, and at odds with the realities of the ancient world. Providing a detailed picture of the social, economic, and intellectual climate in which these manuscripts were written and circulated, he reveals that the number of Christian books from this period is likely fewer than previously believed.

Bagnall explains why papyrus manuscripts have routinely been dated too early, how the role of Christians in the history of the codex has been misrepresented, and how the place of books in ancient society has been misunderstood. The author offers a realistic reappraisal of the number of Christians in Egypt during early Christianity, and provides a thorough picture of the economics of book production during the period in order to determine the number of Christian papyri likely to have existed. Supporting a more conservative approach to dating surviving papyri, Bagnall examines the dramatic consequences of these findings for the historical understanding of the Christian church in Egypt.

In this book, Sabine R. Huebner explores the world of the protagonists of the New Testament and the early Christians using the rich papyrological evidence from Roman Egypt. This gives us unparalleled insights into the everyday lives of the non-elite population in an area quite similar to neighboring Judaea-Palestine. What were the daily concerns and difficulties experienced by a carpenter's family or by a shepherd looking after his flocks? How did the average man or woman experience a Roman census? What obstacles did women living in a patriarchal society face in private, in public, and in the early Church? Given the flight of Jesus' family into Egypt, how mobile were the lower classes, what was their understanding of geography, and what costs and dangers were associated with travel? This volume gives a better understanding of the structural, social, and cultural conditions under which figures from the New Testament lived.

Cognitive Perspectives on Israelite Identity breaks new ground in the study of ethnic identity in the ancient world through the articulation of an explicitly cognitive perspective. In presenting a view of ethnicity as an epistemological rather than an ontological entity, this work seeks to correct the pronounced tendency towards 'analytical groupism' in the academic literature. Challenging what Pierre Bourdieu has called 'our primary inclination to think the world in a substantialist manner,' this study seeks to break with the vernacular categories and 'commonsense primordialisms' encoded within the Biblical texts, whilst at the same time accounting for their tenacious hold on our social and political imagination. It is the recognition of the performative and reifying potential of these categories of ethno-political practice that disqualifies their appropriation as categories of social analysis.

Hieroglyphs were far more than a language. They were an omnipresent and all-powerful force in communicating the messages of ancient Egyptian culture for over three thousand years; used as monumental art, as a means of identifying Egyptianness, and for rarefied communication with the gods. In this exciting new study, Penelope Wilson explores the cultural significance of the script with an emphasis on previously neglected areas such as cryptography, the continuing decipherment into modern times, and examines the powerful fascination hieroglyphs still hold for us today. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

CONTENTS: Abdol Rauh Yaccob, British policy on Arabia before the First World War: an internal argument; Adrian G. Parker &. Jeffrey I. Rose, Climate change and human origins in southern Arabia; Alexandrine Guerin & Faysal Abdallah al-Na'imi, Nineteenth century settlement patterns at Zekrit, Qatar: pottery, tribes and territory; Anthony E. Marks, Into Arabia, perhaps, but if so, from where?; Audrey Peli, A history of the Ziyadids through their coinage (203- 442/818-1050); Aurelie Daems & An De Waele, Some reflections on human-animal burials from pre-Islamic south-east Arabia (poster); Brian Ulrich, The Azd migrations reconsidered: narratives of 'Amr Muzayqiya and Malik b. Fahm in historiographic context; Christian Darles, Derniers resultats, nouvelles datations et nouvelles donnees sur les fortifications de Shabwa (Hadramawt); Eivind Heldaas Seland, The Indian ships at Moscha and the Indo-Arabian trading circuit; Fabio Cavulli & Simona Scaruffi, Stone vessels from KHB-1, Ja'lan region, Sultanate of Oman (poster); Francesco G. Fedele, Wadi al-Tayyilah 3, a Neolithic and Pre-Neolithic occupation on the eastern Yemen Plateau, and its archaeofaunal information; Ghanim Wahida, Walid Yasin al-Tikriti & Mark Beech, Barakah: a Middle Palaeolithic site in Abu Dhabi Emirate; Jeffrey I. Rose & Geoff N. Bailey, Defining the Palaeolithic of Arabia? Notes on the Roundtable Discussion; Jeffrey I. Rose, Introduction: special session to define the Palaeolithic of Arabia; Julie Scott-Jackson, William Scott-Jackson, Jeffrey Rose & Sabah Jasim, Investigating Upper Pleistocene stone tools from Sharjah, UAE: Interim report; Krista Lewis & Lamya Khalidi, From prehistoric landscapes to urban sprawl: the Masn'at Maryah region of highland Yemen; Michael J. Harrower, Mapping and dating incipient irrigation in Wadi Sana, Hadramawt (Yemen); Mikhail Rodionov, The jinn in Hadramawt society in the last century; Mohammed A.R. al-Thenayian, The Red Sea Tihami coastal ports in Saudi Arabia; Mohammed Maraqten, Women's inscriptions recently discovered by the AFSM at the Awam temple/Mahram Bilqis in Marib, Yemen; Nasser Said al-Jahwari & Derek Kennet, A field methodology for the quantification of ancient settlement in an Arabian context; Remy Crassard, The "Wa'shah method": an original laminar debitage from Hadramawt, Yemen; Saad bin Abdulaziz al-Rashid, Sadd al-Khanaq: an early Umayyad dam near Medina, Saudi Arabia; Ueli Brunner, Ancient irrigation in Wadi Jirdan; Vincent Charpentier & Sophie Mery, A Neolithic settlement near the Strait of Hormuz: Akab Island, United Arab Emirates; Vincent Charpentier, Hunter-gatherers of the "empty quarter of the early Holocene" to the last Neolithic societies: chronology of the late prehistory of south-eastern Arabia (8000-3100 BC); Yahya Asiri, Relative clauses in the dialect of Rijal Alma' (south-west Saudi Arabia); Yosef Tobi, Salom (Salim) al-Sabazi's (seventeenth-century) poem of the debate between coffee and qat; Zaydoon Zaid & Mohammed Maraqten, The Peristyle Hall: remarks on the history of construction based on recent archaeological and epigraphic evidence of the AFSM expedition to the Awam temple in Marib, Yemen

In 2014, a collection of papers was found on eBay: a scrapbook, inside which was written 'Testimonial Book of Dragoman Solomon N. Negima'. The letters pasted into the testimonial book bear recommendations of Negima's services as dragoman - a combination of tourist guide and interpreter - in the Holy Land, from travellers of different nationalities, social classes, religions, genders and races. Using these reference letters, and the first-hand published and unpublished accounts of the travellers themselves, this book tells the stories of several such tourists, including the intrepid Victorian female traveller, Ellen E. Miller, and an African-American minister, Rev. Charles T. Walker, who had been born into slavery. Between the lines of others' letters, Solomon Negima's remarkable life story also emerges: from a German mission school in Jerusalem, to the British army in the Sudan, to a successful career as a dragoman in Palestine and Syria, and finally to comfortable retirement with his son, Aziz, and daughter, Olinda, at a Mormon mission in Jerusalem. The discovery of this unique scrapbook allows us an insight into the lives of individuals whose histories would otherwise be lost to us, and a new perspective on the history of travel in the Middle East.

In this important and timely publication, top international scholars present current research and developments about the art, archaeology, and history of the ancient city of Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage site located in Syria. Palmyra became tragic headline news in 2015, when it was overtaken by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), which destroyed many of its monuments and artifacts. The essays in this book include new scholarship on Palmyra's origins and evolution as well as developments from both before and after its damage by ISIS, providing new information that will be relevant to current and future generations of art historians and archaeologists. The book also includes a moving tribute by Waleed Khaled al-Asa'ad to his father, Khaled al-Asa'ad, the Syrian archaeologist and head of antiquities at Palmyra, who was brutally murdered by ISIS in 2015 for defending the site. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press

Analysis of the scroll fragments of the Qumran Aramaic scrolls has been plentiful to date. Their shared characteristics of being written in Aramaic, the common language of the region, not focused on the Qumran Community, and dating from the 3rd century BCE to the 1st century CE have enabled the creation of a shared identity, distinguishing them from other fragments found in the same place at the same time. This classification, however, could yet be too simplistic as here, for the first time, John Starr applies sophisticated statistical analyses to newly available electronic versions of these fragments. In so doing, Starr presents a potential new classification which comprises six different text types which bear distinctive textual features, and thus is able to narrow down the classification both temporally and geographically. Starr's re-visited classification presents fresh insights into the Aramaic texts at Qumran, with important implications for our understanding of the many strands that made up Judaism in the period leading to the writing of the New Testament.

Sean A. Adams and Seth M. Ehorn have drawn together an exciting range of contributors to evaluate the use of composite citations in Early Jewish, Greco-Roman, and Early Christian authors (up through Justin Martyr). The goal is to identify and describe the existence of this phenomenon in both Greco-Roman and Jewish literature. The introductory essay will help to provide some definitional parameters, although the study as a whole will seek to weigh in on this question. The contributors seek to address specific issues, such as whether the quoting author created the composite text or found it already constructed as such. The essays also cover an exploration of the rhetorical and/or literary impact of the quotation in its present textual location, and the question of whether the intended audiences would have recognised and 'reverse engineered' the composite citation and as a result engage with the original context of each of the component parts. In addition to the specific studies, Professor Christopher Stanley provides a summary reflection on all of the essays in the volume along with some implications for New Testament studies.