Egyptology at the Dawn of the Twenty-first Century: Archaeology


Book Description

This comprehensive three-volume set marks the publication of the proceedings of the Eighth International Congress of Egyptologists, held in Cairo in 2000, the largest Congress since the inaugural meeting in 1979. Organized thematically to reflect the breadth and depth of the material presented at this event, these papers provide a survey of current Egyptological research at the dawn of the twenty-first century. The proceedings include the eight Millennium Debates led by esteemed Egyptologists, addressing key issues in the field, as well as nearly every paper presented at the Congress. The 275 papers cover the whole spectrum of Egyptological research. Grouped under the themes of archaeology, history, religion, language, conservation, and museology, and written in English, French, and German, these contributions together form the most comprehensive picture of Egyptology today.




The Sacred Landscape of Dra Abu el-Naga during the New Kingdom


Book Description

In The Sacred Landscape of Dra Abu el-Naga during the New Kingdom, Ángeles Jiménez-Higueras offers the reconstruction of the physical, religious and cultural landscape of Dra Abu el-Naga south and its conceptual development from the 18th to the 20th Dynasties.




4. Symposium Zur Ägyptischen Königsideologie


Book Description

The fourth symposium in the series on Ancient Egyptian Royal Ideology was held at the British Museum in London in 2004, taking at its theme 'Egyptian Royal Residences: Structure and Form'. The scholars who participated in this gathering approached the subject from a broad range of perspectives. They embraced all phases of history from the foundation of the Egyptian state to the Late Period, and covered a variety of interrelated topics. These included the physical layout and architectural design of palaces, the activities which happened inside, and the ideological questions raised by the status of the king - his divine, personal and institutional functions. Beginning with these focal points, the papers and discussions ranged further afield to include the roles of members of the court, their relationship with the king and their activities at the residence. The papers published in this volume focus strongly on the Middle and New Kingdoms, since it is from these periods that the richest sources of data concerning the royal residence survive. Textual sources and archaeological traces of palaces have been carefully studied in conjunction to provide new insights and to open new avenues of research.




The Lost Tombs of Saqqara


Book Description

"Located south of Cairo, Saqqara, the principal necropolis of Memphis, is a privileged site in Egyptian history. There, Egyptian and foreign Egyptologists have made many discoveries, in particular French archaeologists: Auguste Mariette, Gaston Maspero, and Victor Loret in the past, Jean-Philippe Lauer, who passed away at the dawn of his one hundredth year (2001), and in these last decades, Jean Leclant, founder of the French Archaeological Mission of Saqqara." "In this distinguished line of egyptologists, Alain Zivie and his team of the French Archaeological Mission of the Bubasteion have spent the last twenty-five years examining, from the sands of Saqqara, a major New Kingdom cemetery that was later transformed into catacombs of cats. They have brought to light the tomb of the vizier 'Aper-El, with its burial treasure, and those of the painter Thothmes, of Maia, the foster mother of Tutankhamun, of an ambassador of Ramesses II, of the scribe of the Aten treasury in Memphis, and of others, as well." "Presenting the archaeological, historical, and artistic consequences of these investigations and these discoveries, the egyptologist here takes an approach that is sensitive to an authentic scientific adventure. To do this, he also uses and comments on a long series of beautiful photographs by Patrick Chapuis, in which we discover the works and the days, as well as the joys, of an entire team."--BOOK JACKET.




The Tomb of Iniuia in the New Kingdom Necropolis of Memphis at Saqqara


Book Description

"Iniuia, a high official under King Tutankhamun, started his career as Scribe of the Treasury of the Lord of the Two Lands in Memphis. Next he became overseer of the cattle of Amun and High Steward of Memphis, His tomb, situated just south of the tomb of General Horemheb, was excavated in 1993 by the Joint Expedition of the Egypt Exploration Society and the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden. There are two chapels, one of which is decorated with painted scenes showing Iniuia and his family officiated before the gods of the beyond. They are the finest wall-paintings found to date in the New Kingdom necropolis at Saqqara. The walls of the other chapel are covered with pained reliefs in a style which is reminiscent of the art of Amarna. The scenes show Iniuia performing various activities in his capacity of a high official of the king. The chapel has a pyramid, one of the best preserved examples of its kind discovered in Saqqara up to now. The book contains chapters on the architecture of the tomb, on the decoration of both chapels including reliefs, other monuments and objects from Iniuia's tomb but now in museum collections, such as the anthropoid sarcophagus on Iniuia in the Musée du Louvre. Apart from chapters on the objects and the skeletal remains found in the tomb - the latter by Eugen Strouhal - the book contains a comprehensive contribution by Barbara G. Aston on the pottery found in the tomb of Iniuia and surrounding area."--Page 4 of cover.




Imagining the Past


Book Description

The first full-length study of historical fiction in New Kingdom Egypt, Imagining the Past provides significant new information concerning ancient Egyptian historiography.




The Walking Dead at Saqqara


Book Description

Funerary rituals and the cult of the dead are classics of research in religious studies, especially for ancient Egypt. Still, we know relatively little about how people interacted in daily life at the city of Memphis and its Saqqara necropolis in the late second millennium BCE. By focussing on lived ancient religion, we can see that the social and religious strategies employed by the individuals at Saqqara are not just means on the way to religious, post-mortem salvation, nor is their self-representation simply intended to manifest social status. On the contrary, the religious practices at Saqqara show in their complex spatiality a wide spectrum of options to configure sociality before and after one's own death. The analytical distinction between religion and other forms of human practices and sociality illuminates the range of cultural practices and how people selected, modified, or even avoided certain religious practices. As a result, pre-funerary, funerary and practices of the subsequent mortuary cults, in close connection with religious practices directed towards other ancestors and deities, allow the formation of imagined and functioning reminiscence clusters as central social groups at Saqqara, creating a heuristic model applicable also to other contexts.




Urban Religion in Late Antiquity


Book Description

Urban Religion is an emerging research field cutting across various social science disciplines, all of them dealing with “lived religion” in contemporary and (mainly) global cities. It describes the reciprocal formation and mutual influence of religion and urbanity in both their material and ideational dimensions. However, this approach, if duly historicized, can be also fruitfully applied to antiquity. Aim of the volume is the analysis of the entanglement of religious communication and city life during an arc of time that is characterised by dramatic and even contradicting developments. Bringing together textual analyses and archaelogical case studies in a comparative perspective, the volume zooms in on the historical context of the advanced imperial and late antique Mediterranean space (2nd–8th centuries CE).




The Saqqara Necropolis through the New Kingdom


Book Description

This book is the first comprehensive monographic treatment of the New Kingdom (1539–1078 BCE) necropolis at Saqqara, the burial ground of the ancient Egyptian city of Memphis, and addresses questions fundamental to understanding the site’s development through time. For example, why were certain areas of the necropolis selected for burial in certain time periods; what were the tombs’ spatial relations to contemporaneous and older monuments; and what effect did earlier structures have on the positioning of tombs and structuring of the necropolis in later times? This study adopts landscape biography as a conceptual tool to study the long-time interaction between people and landscapes.




Wonderful Things


Book Description

Just in time for the centennial of the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb, this volume of studies dedicated to the leading expert on the "boy king" brings together scholars from all over the world to celebrate the career of C. Nicholas Reeves. It includes a biography and bibliography of Reeves along with cutting-edge discussions of a wide variety of topics concentrating on New Kingdom Egypt and Tutankhamun.