This book is the first investigation of the relationship between Palmyra and its surrounding territory from the Roman to the early Islamic period since D. Schlumberger's pioneer campaigns in the mountains northwest of Palmyra in the late 1930s. It discusses the agricultural potential of the hinterland, its role in the food supply of the city, and the interaction with the nomadic networks on the Syrian dry steppe. The investigation is based on an extensive joint Syrian-Norwegian surface survey north of Palmyra in 2008, 2010 and 2011 and on studies of satellite imagery. It contains a gazetteer of 70 new sites, which include numerous villages, estates, forts, stations and water management systems.

First runner-up for the British-Kuwait Friendship Society Book Prize in Middle Eastern Studies 2015. In ancient Egypt, wrapping sacred objects, including mummified bodies, in layers of cloth was a ritual that lay at the core of Egyptian society. Yet in the modern world, attention has focused instead on unwrapping all the careful arrangements of linen textiles the Egyptians had put in place. This book breaks new ground by looking at the significance of textile wrappings in ancient Egypt, and at how their unwrapping has shaped the way we think about the Egyptian past. Wrapping mummified bodies and divine statues in linen reflected the cultural values attached to this textile, with implications for understanding gender, materiality and hierarchy in Egyptian society. Unwrapping mummies and statues similarly reflects the values attached to Egyptian antiquities in the West, where the colonial legacies of archaeology, Egyptology and racial science still influence how Egypt appears in museums and the press. From the tomb of Tutankhamun to the Arab Spring, Unwrapping Ancient Egypt raises critical questions about the deep-seated fascination with this culture - and what that fascination says about our own.

The subject of this study is an examination of the resources at the disposal of the elite class of Old Kingdom officials who administered the state on behalf of the crown. Their assets included one or more rural estates either owned outright or held in usufruct and/or enjoyed according to a land-owning system referred to as the pr Dt (estate), and all that the estate produced: a workforce if in some way bound to the estate, buildings, means of transport, household and personal effects.

The period of the demise of the kingdom of Judah at the end of the 6th century B.C.E., the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians, the exile of the elite to Babylon, and the reshaping of the territory of the new province of Judah, culminating at the end of the century with the first return of exiles-all have been subjects of intense scrutiny during the last decade. Lipschits takes into account the biblical textual evidence, the results of archaeological research, and the reports of Babylonian and Egyptian sources and provides a comprehensive survey and analysis of the evidence for the history of this 100-year-long era. He provides a lucid historical survey that will, no doubt, become the baseline for all future studies of this era.

Addresses a much-contested archaeological discovery In 1980 archaeologists unearthed a tomb near Jerusalem that contained a family's ossuaries inscribed with some familiar New Testament names, including Mary, Joseph, and Jesus. In 2007 the Discovery Channel produced and broadcast a documentary called The Lost Tomb of Jesus, raising interest -- and controversy -- among the public and specialists alike. Could this actually be the tomb of Jesus and his family? In January of 2008 a group of internationally renowned scholars from a broad range of disciplines met in Jerusalem to discuss that very question. Covering the archaeological facts about the discovery, Jewish burial customs during the late Second Temple period, first-century inscriptions, the Talpiot tomb, the James ossuary, the Holy Sepulcher, and more, this volume presents their expert perspectives on a much-publicized topic.Contributors Mordechai Aviam, Wolfgang E. Krumbein, James H. Charlesworth, Andre Lemaire, Claude Cohen-Matlofsky, Lee Martin McDonald, April D. DeConick, Charles Pellegrino, Casey D. Elledge, Stephen Pfann, Mark Elliott, Petr Pokorny, Howard R. Feldman, Jonathan J. Price, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Christopher A. Rollston, Camil Fuchs, Amnon Rosenfeld, Shimon Gibson, Jane Schaberg, Rachel Hachlili, Andrew V. Sills, Eldad Keynan, Mark Spigelman, Kevin Kilty, James D. Tabor, Amos Kloner, Konstantinos Th. Zarras, , Watch an interview with James H. Charlesworth below:,

This research takes an integrative approach to the study of Hellenistic cult and cultic practices in an important part of western Asia by employing a combination of archaeological, numismatic and historical evidence. Although any thorough investigation of Seleukid religion would prove illuminating in itself, this research uses religion as a lens through which to explore the processes of acculturation and rejection within a colonial context. It discusses the state attitude towards, and manipulation of, both Hellenic and indigenous beliefs and places this within a framework developed out of a series of case studies exploring evidence for religion at a regional level. The study outlines the development of religious practices and expression in the region which formed the birthplace of the modern world's three most influential monotheistic religions.

Contents: Mikhail Abramzon: A hoard of bronze Pontic and Bosporan coins of the reign of Mithradates VI from Phanagoria, 2007; Anna Alexandropoulou: The Late Classical and Hellenistic pottery of Sinope and Amisos; William Anderson and Abby Robinson: Marginal or mainstream? The character of settlement in Late Roman Paphlagonia; Sumer Atasoy: New exploration of the southern Black Sea coast: Filyos - Tios; Eka Avaliani: Ancient Anatolia: cultural mosaic, not melting pot; Lucretiu Mihailescu-Birliba: Les Pontobithyniens en Dacie romaine; Thomas Bruggemann: Paphlagonia between Goths, Sasanids and Arabs (3rd-8th centuries AD); Ertekin Doksanalti and Gungor Karauguz: The Hellenistic and Roman ceramics from field surveys at Devrek and its environs, west Black Sea region of Turkey; Sevket Donmez: A new excavation in Pontus: Amasya-Oluz Hoyuk. Preliminary results for the Hellenistic period and Iron Age layers; Dimitris P. Drakoulis: Regional transformations and the settlement network of the coastal Pontic provinces in the Early Byzantine period; Cristian E. Ghita: The Pontic army: integrating Persian and Macedonian traditions; J.G.F. Hind: Milesian and Sinopean traders in Colchis (Greeks at Phasis and the ransoming of shipwrecked sailors); Monica M. Jackson: The Amisos Treasure: a Hellenistic tomb from the age of Mithradates Eupator; Gungor Karauguz, Ozsen Corumluoglu, Ibrahim Kalayci and Ibrahim Asri: A 3D digital photogrammetric model of a Roman 'birdrock monument' in the north-west region of Anatolia; Merab Khalvashi and Emzar Kakhidze: Sinopean amphorae in Apsarus; Liudmila G. Khrushkova: Chersonesus in the Crimea: Early Byzantine capitals with fine-toothed acanthus leaves; Liudmila G. Khrushkova and Dmitri E. Vasilinenko: Basilica Lesnoe-1 near Sochi in the north-eastern Black Sea region; Sergei A. Kovalenko The Hestiatorion of the Chaika settlement in the north-western Crimea; Ergun Lafli und Eva Christof: Drei neu entdeckte Phallossteine aus der Chora von Hadrianopolis; Boris Agomedov and Sergey Didenko: Red Slip Ware in Chernyakhov culture; Iulian Moga: Strabo on the Persian Artemis and Men in Pontus and Lydia; Kyrylo Myzgin: Finds of Roman coins of Asia Minor provincial mintage in the territory of Chernyakhov Culture; Alexander V. Podossinov: Bithynia, Paphlagonia and Pontus on the Tabula Peutingeriana; Jean-Louis Podvin: Cultes isiaques en Pont et Paphlagonie; Elena A. Popova and Tatiana V. Egorova: Investigation of the Late Scythian cinder heap on the site of Chaika near Evpatoria in the north-west Crimea; Annette Teffeteller: Strategies of continuity in the construction of ethnic and cultural identity: the lineage and role of Zeus Stratios in Pontus and Paphlagonia; Bruno Tripodi: Paphlagonian horseman in Cunaxa (Xenophon Anabasis 1. 8. 5); Gocha R. Tsetskhladze: The southern Black Sea coast and its hinterland: an ethno-cultural perspective; Maya Vassileva: The rock-cut monuments of Phrygia, Paphlagonia and Thrace: a comparative overview; Jose Vela Tejada: Stasis and polemos at Pontus in the first half of the 4th century BC according to Aeneas Tacticus: the Datames' siege of Sinope; Fred C. Woudhuizen; The saga of the Argonauts: a reflex of Thraco-Phrygian maritime encroachment on the southern Pontic littoral; Luca Zavagno: Amastris (Paphlagonia): a study in Byzantine urban history between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages; Elena A. Zinko: Peculiarities of the paintings of Bosporan crypts of the 3rd-6th centuries AD; Two Appendices: Pessinus in Phrygia: Brief Preliminary Report of the 2010 Field Season.

This work examines one section of southern Karnak from the ancient Egyptian city of Thebes. Excavations at the site uncovered extensive remains from the late New Kingdom (12th-11th c. BCE), Third Intermediate Period (11th-7th c. BCE), and Late Period occupation of the area (7th-4th c. BCE). The research questions focused on determining the function of this section of the city and the nature of its relationship to the neighbouring Mut temple. A close study of the architectural and ceramic evidence traces the changing roles of the area through time, with special emphasis on a large-scale mud-brick building discovered at the site.

This fresh categorisation and examination grew from the author's innate curiosity about the shapes and forms of the ships and boats of the Ancient World and particularly of the Ancient Egyptians. Many years sailing and the book by Nancy Jenkins, "The Boat beneath the Pyramid" which considered the vessel buried alongside the Great Pyramid of Giza sparked this curiosity, and from this start point, the focus of the research moved to the catalogue of model vessels in the Cairo Museum collection, published by Reisner, and the surviving hulls from Dahshur. These sources were augmented and supported by the work by Boreux. Finds such as the timbers from Lisht added valuable information. An interest in the greater variety of vessels to be known from the Old and Middle Kingdoms concentrated the researcher's attention upon the craft of these periods. Three fragmentary examples of hull forms, supposedly not known until the Old Kingdom, have been included, as the categorization system proposed in this research attempts to push back the previously accepted dates of some Egyptian hull shapes.

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.

A collection of papers in honour of Eyptologist Ulrich Luft. Contents: 1) The Greek subliterary texts and the Demotic literature (Adrienn Almasy); 2) Die drei Kartuschen im Naoseingang (Edith Bernhauer); 3) Eine archaisierende Konigsfigur der spaten Libyerzeit (Helmut Brandl) 4) A Phantom Debate ? (Edward Brovarski); 5) Inscriptions of the high priest Pinudjem I on the walls of the Eighteenth Dynasty Temple at Medinet Habu (Gabriella Dembitz); 6) News from Old Kingdom Thebes (Zoltan Imre Fabian); 7) Who was Sinuhe? (Hans Goedicke); 8) Memphis in der fruhen 6. Dynastie als Fallbeispiel agyptologischer Residenzenforschung (Rolf Gundlach); 9) Massbezeichnungen auf koptischen Papyri und Ostraka (Monika Hasitzka); 10) A Greek Coptic Glossary Found at TT65 (Andrea Hasznos); 11) Zum koptischen Alphabet des Bernhard von Breydenbach (1486) (Balazs J. Irsay-Nagy); 12) Die Naoi und die Kulttopographie von Saft el-Henneh (Dieter Kessler); 13) The protagonist-catalogues of the apocryphal acts of Apostles in the Coptic Manichaica a re-assessment of the evidence (Gabor Kosa); 14) Feudalisms of Egyptology (Katalin Anna Kothay); 15) Der Sennefer Brief, Berlin P 10463 die Lesung des Papyrusmaterials (Myriam Krutzsch) 16) Shakespeares The Tempest and the Latin Asclepius (Ildiko Limpar); 17) From Middle Kingdom apotropaia to Netherworld Books (Eva Liptay); 18) Zu einer Formulierung in Totenbuch Kapitel (Alexander Manisali); 19) Les Proces. Un genre litteraire de lEgypte ancienne (Bernard Mathieu); 20) Vom schonen Erzahlen. Buchstablich fabelhafte Bilder (Ludwig D. Morenz); 21) Die administrativen Texte der Berliner Lederhandschrift (Matthias Muller); 22) Letters from Gurna. The mix-and-match game of an excavation (Bori Nemeth); 23) Zum Tempel des Amonre Der die Bitte hort in Karnak (Jurgen Osing); 24) The forms of the shadow: The birth-stories of the first archon in the ancient Gnostic texts from Nag Hammadi (Csaba Otvos); 25) Elkasai (Monika Pesthy-Simon); 26) Foreign groups at Lahun during the late Middle Kingdom (Mate Petrik); 27) Geschlechtsidentitatsstorungen im altagyptischen Pantheon? Einige Bemerkungen zum Phanomen wechselnder Genuskorrelationen von Gotternamen (Andreas H. Pries); 28) Eine agyptische Bezeichnung der Perle? (Joachim Friedrich Quack); 29) The domestic servant of the palace rn-snb (Helmut Satzinger and Danijela Stefanovic); 30) An Early Stela of the High Priest Amenhotep of the 20th Dynasty? (Julia Schmied); 31) The Burial Shaft of the Tomb of Amenhotep, Overseer of the First Phyle Theban Tomb No. -64- (Gabor Schreiber); 32) The Epistolary topos and War (Anthony Spalinger); 33) He did its Like: Some Uses of Repetition in Demotic Narrative Fiction (John Tait); 34) Aegyptio-Afroasiatica XXIV(Gabor Takacs); 35) The Demons of the Air and the Water of the Nile. Saint Anthony the Great on the Reason of the Inundation (Peter Toth); 36) Der gottliche Ramses II. im Grossen Tempel von Abu Simbel (Martina Ullmann); 37) Excavation in the Tomb of Piay in Dra Abu el Naga (TT 344) (Zsuzsanna Vanek); 38) Deux etiquettes de momie) (Edith Varga); 39) One seal and two sealings of the Fifth Dynasty and their historical implications (Miroslav Verner); 40) Zur Homonymie in den Kxoe-Varietaten des Zentralkhoisan (Rainer Vossen); 41) Ein Sphinxkopf aus der 12. Dynastie (Munchen AS 7110) (Gabriele Wenzel); 42) Eine ptolemaische Abrechung uber inneragyptischen Finanzausgleich. (P. Fitzhugh D.4 + P. Wangstedt 7) (Karl-Theodor Zauzich).

This book surveys four thousand years of pottery production and presents totally unexpected fresh information, using technical and analytical methods. It provides a study of ancient pottery of Jerusalem, from the earliest settlement to the medieval city and brings to light important aspects that cannot be discovered by the commonly accepted morphological pottery descriptions. New insights include the discovery that third millennium BCE pottery appears to have been produced by nomadic families, middle Bronze Age ceramics were made by professional potters in the Wadi Refaim, the pottery market of the Iron Age II pottery cannot be closely dated and is still produced during the first centuries after the exile, and the new shapes are made by Greek immigrant potters. The book contains a chapter on the systematics of ceramic studies and numerous notes about the potters themselves.

‘Tanbûr Long-Necked Lutes Along the Silk Road and Beyond’ explores the origin, history, construction, and playing techniques of tanbûrs, a musical instrument widely used over vast territories and over many centuries. The diffusion of the tanbûr into the musical cultures along the Silk Road resulted in a variety of tanbûrs with two or more, occasionally doubled or tripled courses, a varying number and variously tuned frets, each having its own characteristic sound, playing technique, and repertory. Since the last century, tanbûrs spread beyond the Silk Road while new versions continue to appear due to changing musical and tonal demands made on them. Similar or identical instruments are also known by other names, such as saz or bağlama, dotâr or dutâr, setâr, dömbra, and dambura.

The Life of Margaret Alice Murray: A Woman s Work in Archaeology is the first book-length biography of Margaret Alice Murray (1863 1963), one of the first women to practice archeology. Despite Murray s numerous professional successes, her career has received little attention because she has been overshadowed by her mentor, Sir Flinders Petrie. This oversight has obscured the significance of her career including her fieldwork, the students she trained, her administration of the pioneering Egyptology Department at University College London (UCL), and her published works. Rather than focusing on Murray s involvement in Petrie s archaeological program, Kathleen L. Sheppard treats Murray as a practicing scientist with theories, ideas, and accomplishments of her own. This book analyzes the life and career of Margaret Alice Murray as a teacher, excavator, scholar, and popularizer of Egyptology, archaeology, anthropology, linguistics, and more. Sheppard also analyzes areas outside of Murray s archaeology career, including her involvement in the suffrage movement, her work in folklore and witchcraft studies, and her life after her official retirement from UCL."

FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHORS OF FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS AND THE ORION MYSTERY 'An exciting book . . . deservedly a bestseller' SPECTATOR ___________________________________________ In Keeper of Genesis, Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval present a tour de force of historical and scientific detective work: * When and where did history begin? * When was the genesis of civilisation in Egypt? * How and why were the Great Sphinx and the three pyramids of Giza designed to serve as parts of an immense three-dimensional model of the sky of 'First Time'? * What is contained in the rectangular chamber that seismic surveys have located in the bedrock far below the paws of the sphinx? * What lies behind the mysterious doors recently discovered at the end of a previously unexplored shaft inside the Great Pyramid? * Does mankind have a rendezvous with destiny - a rendezvous not in the future, but in the distant past - at a precise place and time? Using sophisticated computer simulations of the ancient skies to crack the millennial code that the monuments transcribe, Bauval and Hancock set out a startling new theory of the Pyramid Texts and other archaic Egyptian scriptures. ___________________________________________ 'Reads like a detective story, with the reader enthusiastically trying to outguess the writers' Literary Review 'Start the book in the early evening and continue uninterrupted till you complete it in the small house. The effect is wonderful . . . Your entire world view has been shifted a hundred yards . . . You fall asleep thinking that nothing will ever be the same again' Sunday Telegraph

Papers from an international Egyptological conference entitled Evolving Egypt: Innovation, Appropriation, and Reinterpretation in Ancient Egypt held in February 2006 at BYU-Hawaii (Oahu). Contents: 1) Possibilities and Pitfalls in Identifying Innovation: The Early Ramesside Era as a Case Study (Kerry Muhlestein); 2) Les bateaux et le sacre dans l'ancienne Egypte (Ana Maria Rosso); 3) Symbolic Connotations of Pyramid Temples in the 5th and 6th Dynasties (Pal Steiner); 4) Dating of Stelae of the 12th Dynasty: A Statistical Approach (Des Bright); 5) The Expansionist Policies of the New Kingdom and the Increase in Craft Specialization in the Textile Industry (Giovanni Tata); 6) Copy and Reinterpretation in the Tomb of Nakht: Ancient Egyptian Hermeneutics (Valerie Angenot); 7) The Daily Cult: Space, Continuity and Change (Robyn Gillam); 8) Glossed Over: Ancient Egyptian Interpretations of Their Religion (John Gee); 9) The Hieratic Scribal Tradition in Preexilic Judah (David Calabro); 10) Ptolemaic Translation and Representation: The Hellenistic Sculptural Program of the Memphite Sarapieion (Shanna Kennedy-Quigley); 11) Appropriation of Egyptian Judgment in the Testament of Abraham? (Jared Ludlow); 12 New Evidence of Coptic Mummification Techniques From Tell El-Hibeh, Middle Egypt (Robert M. Yohe II, Jill K. Gardner, and Deanna Heikkinen).

This book is intended as an introduction to the archaeology of the easternmost regions of Greek settlement in the Hellenistic period, from the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late fourth century BC, through to the last Greek-named kings of north-western India somewhere around the late first century BC, or even early first century AD. The Far East of the Hellenistic world a region comprising areas of what is now Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and the former-Soviet Central Asian Republics is best known from the archaeological remains of sites such as Ai Khanoum, which attest the endurance of Greek cultural and political presence in the region in the three centuries following the conquests of Alexander the Great. The chapters here survey the available evidence, including Latin, Greek, Chinese and Indian texts, as well as archaeology, survey the secondary literature, and ponder themes of identity, cultural contact and ethnicity.

Between 2004 and 2008 the Centre for Maritime Archaeology (CMA), University of Southampton and the Department of Underwater Antiquities of the Egyptian Supreme Council for Antiquities (SCA), in conjunction with the Centre for Maritime Archaeology and Underwater Cultural Heritage (CMAUCH), University of Alexandria, conducted five seasons of survey along the shores of the western arm of Lake Mareotis, Alexandria, Egypt. This was to be the first systematic, comprehensive survey of the region, the aim being to more fully appreciate the nature of Lake Mareotis and the role it played in the economy of ancient Alexandria. An initial visit to the region in 2002 alerted the co-directors of the subsequent project, Lucy Blue (CMA) and Sameh Ramses (SCA), to the huge potential of the area, as well as the immediate threats that the archaeology of the region faced.

16 papers from the 'Egyptology in Australia and New Zealand' Conference held in Melbourne, September 4th-6th 2009. Contents: A History of Egyptology at Monash University, Melbourne (C. Hope); 1) Trade and Power: The Role of Naqada as a Trading Centre in Predynastic Egypt (J. Cox); 2) Antecedents to the Ptolemaic Mammisis (V. Crown); 3) Ptolemaic 'Black Ware' from Mut el-Kharab (J. Gill); 4) The Decorative Program of the Amarna Rock Tombs: Unique Scenes of the Egyptian Military and Police (E. Healey); 5) The Use of Myth in the Pyramid Texts (J. Hellum); 6) The Application of Cladistics to Early Dynastic Egyptian Ceramics: Applying a New Method (A. Hood & J. Valentine); 7) Searching for an Oasis Identity: Dakhleh Oasis in the Third Intermediate Period (C. Hubschmann); 8) Ambiguous Images: The Problems and Possibilities of Analysing Rock-art Images in the Egyptian Western Desert (D. James); 9) The Ruler of Kush (Kerma) at Buhen during the Second Intermediate Period: A Reinterpretation of Buhen Stela 691 and Related Objects (C. Knoblauch); 10) On Interpreting the Meaning of Amulets and Other Objects using the Frog Motif as an Example (J. Kremler); 11) Administrative Control of Egypt's Western Oases during the New Kingdom: A Tale of Two Cities (R. Long); 12) It Really is Aha: Re-examining an Early Dynastic Ink Inscription from Tarkhan (L. Mawdeley); 13) Invisible History: The First Intermediate Period in United Kingdom (UK) Museum Exhibitions (M. Pitkin); 14) The Inscriptions of Hatshepsut at the Temple of Semnah: An Art-historical and Epigraphic Re-appraisal (A. Shackell-Smith); 15) Characterisation and Legitimisation in the Doomed Prince (D. Stewart); 16) The Typology of 26th Dynasty Funerary Figurines (S. Volk).

A collection of 29 papers on a wide range of Egyptological and Coptic subjects. Aspects of epigraphy, art history, architecture, artefactual studies, philology, and the history of Egyptology and Coptic studies are among the many topics discussed. Papers predominantly in Italian , with a few in French and one in English.

Cross-referencing visual depictions with the more meagre archaeological record, this study presents a typology of this significant artefact. It examines the ritual uses of the amulet, and discusses its symbolic place in Egyptian theology, drawing on the work of Jan Assman.

Ash-sharq is a journal devoted to short articles on the archaeology, history and society of the Ancient Near East.

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.