Sixth-century BCE Egypt spawned a key figure of ancient cross-regional diplomacy. The Egyptian politician and chief physician Udjahorresnet had important inner-political roles in the former Egyptian kingship realm and became a significant figure in transforming Egypt into a regional centre within the vast and culturally diverse empire of the Achaemenid Persians. Udjahorresnet's reputation was such that he was revered some two centuries after his death, but today many scholars view him as a collaborator. He was, no doubt, a complex man, and he left a complex record reflecting the complex world in which he lived. The thirteen essays in this volume explore his life, his texts, his artifacts and his milieu.

The origin of the second Kingdom of Kush (c. 850 BCE-350 CE) has been the subject of much discussion and debate over the years. The kingdom that arose at Napata lasted over a thousand years, evolving over time and continuing to influence the polities that emerged after the kingdom broke apart in about 350 CE. One of the kingdom's modern legacies is as an early example of an African state, allowing for an exploration of larger theoretical questions surrounding state formation, religion and ideology, political economy, identity, and intercultural interaction. At the same time, the Kingdom of Kush has played an important and controversial role in the development of Black studies, the discourse of Afrocentrism, and a consideration of the asymmetries in the racial discourse surrounding Egypt in particular and Africa more generally, both in their historical and contemporary incarnations. The Origins and Afterlives of Kush conference was held at the University of California, Santa Barbara, July 25-27, 2019. Organized by Stuart Tyson Smith with the assistance of Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei and sponsored by the UCSB Department of Anthropology with support from the College of Letters and Sciences and the Institute for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Research, it featured daily discussion sessions and twenty-one presentations, of which ten are published in this special volume of the Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections.

Subjects covered in this volume: Egyptian amulets from Jebel Qurma, Jordan; Scarabs and seals in the Central Italian Peninsula; the faience industry at Kermat; Egyptianizing faience from the sanctuary of Apollo Hylates, Cyprus; Egyptian Serekh-like incisions on a vessel found at En Esur, Israel; reappraisal of the history of Philae in the C4th CE. The Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections (JAEI) is a scholarly publication integrating Egyptology with Mediterranean, Near Eastern, and African studies - providing a dedicated venue for this growing field of interdisciplinary and inter-area research.

The concept of pharaonic Egypt as a unified, homogeneous, and isolated cultural entity is misleading. Ancient Egypt was a rich tapestry of social, religious, technological, and economic interconnections among numerous cultures from disparate lands. In fifteen chapters divided into five thematic groups, Pharaoh's Land and Beyond uniquely examines Egypt's relationship with its wider world. The first section details the geographical contexts of interconnections by examining ancient Egyptian exploration, maritime routes, and overland passages. In the next section, chapters address the human principals of association: peoples, with the attendant difficulties of differentiating ethnic identities from the record; diplomatic actors, with their complex balances and presentations of power; and the military, with its evolving role in pharaonic expansion. Natural events, from droughts and floods to illness and epidemics, also played significant roles in this ancient world, as examined in the third section. The final two sections explore the physical manifestations of interconnections between pharaonic Egypt and its neighbors, first in the form of material objects and second, in the powerful exchange of ideas. Whether through diffusion and borrowing of knowledge and technology, through the flow of words by script and literature, or through exchanges in the religious sphere, the pharaonic Egypt that we know today was constantly changing-and changing the cultures around it. This illustrious work represents the first synthesis of these cultural relationships, unbounded by time, geography, or mode.

In recent decades, study of the ancient Egyptian natural world and its classification has adopted innovative approaches involving new technologies of analysis and a multidisciplinary general view. This collection of papers focuses on one particularly important aspect of foreign trade: the importation of aromatic products. Contributors present the results of the latest researches into the origin and meaning of foreign aromatic products imported in Egypt from the south (Nubia, Punt, Arabia, Horn of Africa) from the beginning of the Dynastic period. The quest for aromata has been of a crucial importance in Egypt, since it was closely connected with economic, political, ideological, religious and mythic spheres. Through archaeological research, epigraphic analysis and iconographic investigations new evidence is explored supporting the most likely hypothesis about the sources of these raw materials. The study of related documents has revealed possible linguistic links between ancient Egyptian and other African ancient languages, and a strong link between aromata and the divine world through the creation of many Egyptian myths. The references to some specific aromatic products (ti-shepes, snetjer, antyw, hesayt) have been subject to careful lexicographic analysis, with special reference to Old Kingdom occurrences. Iconographic and field investigations documented here seek to better define the Egyptian way of representing the 'foreign' world and the value of its products in the spheres of Egyptian religiosity and rising Pharaonic ideology.

In December of 2016, the University of the Aegean's Department of Mediterranean Studies held a symposium in Rhodes on the topic of "Religion, Politics, and Culture in the Mediterranean from the 8th to the 6th Centuries BC." The conference was organized by the Aegean Egyptology group and Laboratory of the Ancient World of the Eastern Mediterranean and was directed by Panagiotis Kousoulis. This volume publishes a selection of the papers presented at the symposium.