The American University in Cairo Press

“An absolute gem for specialists and students alike, abundantly illustrated in full color throughout, by an excellent scholar at the height of her powers."—David Aston, The Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna

A meticulous study of the social, economic, and religious significance of coffin reuse and development during the Ramesside and early Third Intermediate periods, illustrated with over 900 images

Funerary datasets are the chief source of social history in Egyptology, and the numerous tombs, coffins, Books of the Dead, and mummies of the Twentieth and Twenty-first Dynasties have not been fully utilized as social documents, mostly because the data of this time period is scattered and difficult to synthesize. This culmination of fifteen years of coffin study analyzes coffins and other funerary equipment of elites from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-second Dynasties to provide essential windows into social strategies and adaptations employed during the Bronze Age collapse and subsequent Iron Age reconsolidation.

Many Twentieth to Twenty-second Dynasty coffins show evidence of reuse from other, older coffins, as well as obvious marks where gilding or inlay have been removed. Innovative vignettes painted onto coffin surfaces reflect new religious strategies and coping mechanisms within this time of crisis, while advances in mummification techniques reveal an Egyptian anxiety about long-term burial without coffins as a new style of stuffed and painted mummy was developed for the wealthy. It was in the context of necropolis insecurity, economic crisis, and group burial in reused and unpainted chambers that a complex, polychrome coffin style emerged.

The first part of this book focuses on the theory and evidence of coffin reuse, contextualized within the social collapse that characterized the Twentieth and Twenty-first Dynasties. The second part presents photo essays of annotated visual data for over sixty Egyptian coffins from the so-called Royal Caches, most of them from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Illustrated throughout with high-quality images, the line drawings and color and black-and-white photographs are ideal for careful study, especially evidenced in the digital edition, where pages can be enlarged for close examination.

An exploration of the political thought of one of the twentieth century's most influential thinkers and the foremost advocate for the Palestinian cause in the West

Edward Said was one of the most influential intellectuals of the twentieth century. A literary scholar with an aesthete’s temperament, he did not experience his political awakening until the 1967 Arab–Israeli war, which transformed his thinking and led him to forge ties with political groups and like-minded scholars. Said’s subsequent writings, which cast light on the interplay between cultural representation and the exercise of Western political power, caused a seismic shift in scholarly circles and beyond. In this intimate intellectual biography, by a close friend and confidant, Nubar Hovsepian offers fascinating insight into the evolution of Said’s political thought.

Through analysis of Said’s seminal works and the debates surrounding them, Edward Said: The Politics of an Oppositional Intellectual traces the influence of Foucault on Said, and how Said eventually diverged from this influence to arrive at a more pronounced understanding of agency, resistance, and liberation. He consequently affiliated more closely with Raymond Williams, Antonio Gramsci, and more contemporaneously, with his friends the late Eqbal Ahmad and Ibrahim Abu-Lughod.

Said held that it is the intellectual’s responsibility to expose lies and deceptions of the holders of power. A passionate advocate for the Palestinian cause, his solidarity did not prevent him from launching a sustained critique of the Palestinian leadership. Hovsepian charts both Said’s engagement with the Palestinian national movement and his exchanges with a host of intellectuals over Palestine, arguing that Said’s interventions have succeeded in changing the parameters of the discourse in the humanities, and among younger Jews searching for political affiliation.

Drawing on his diaries, in which he recorded his meetings with Said, as well as access to some of Said’s private letters, Hovsepian illuminates, in rich detail, the trajectory of Said’s political thinking and the depth and breadth of his engagement with peers and critics over issues that continue to resonate to this day.

Cutting-edge research by twenty-four international scholars on female power, agency, health, and literacy in ancient Egypt

There has been considerable scholarship in the last fifty years on the role of ancient Egyptian women in society. With their ability to work outside the home, inherit and dispense of property, initiate divorce, testify in court, and serve in local government, Egyptian women exercised more legal rights and economic independence than their counterparts throughout antiquity. Yet, their agency and autonomy are often downplayed, undermined, or outright ignored. In Women in Ancient Egypt twenty-four international scholars offer a corrective to this view by presenting the latest cutting-edge research on women and gender in ancient Egypt.

Covering the entirety of Egyptian history, from earliest times to Late Antiquity, this volume commences with a thorough study of the earliest written evidence of Egyptian women, both royal and non-royal, before moving on to chapters that deal with various aspects of Egyptian queens, followed by studies on the legal status and economic roles of non-royal women and, finally, on women’s health and body adornment. Within this sweeping chronological range, each study is intensely focused on the evidence recovered from a particular site or a specific time-period. Rather than following a strictly chronological arrangement, the thematic organization of chapters enables readers to discern diachronic patterns of continuity and change within each group of women.

• Clémentine Audouit, Paul Valery University, Montpellier, France
• Anne Austin, University of Missouri, St. Louis, Missouri, USA
• Mariam Ayad, The American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt
• Romane Betbeze, Université de Genève, Switzerland, and Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, PSL, France
• Anke Ilona Blöbaum, Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany
• Eva-Maria Engel, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
• Renate Fellinger, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
• Kathrin Gabler, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland
• Rahel Glanzmann, independent scholar, Basel, Switzerland.
• Izold Guegan, Swansea University, UK, and Sorbonne University, Paris, France
• Fayza Haikal, The American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt
• Janet H. Johnson, Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, Il, USA
• Katarzyna Kapiec, Institute of the Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland
• Susan Anne Kelly, Macquarie University Sydney, Sydney, Australia
• AnneMarie Luijendijk, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA
• Suzanne Onstine, University of Memphis, Memphis, Tennessee, USA
• José Ramón Pérez-Accino Picatoste,
• Tara Sewell-Lasater, University of Houston, Houston, Texas, USA
• Yasmin El Shazly, American Research Center in Egypt, Cairo, Egypt
• Reinert Skumsnes, Centre for Gender Research, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
• Isabel Stünkel, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, USA
• Inmaculada Vivas Sainz, National Distance Education University), Madrid, Spain
• Hana Vymazalová, Czech Institute of Egyptology, Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Prague, Czeck Republic
• Jacquelyn Williamson, George Mason University, Fairfax, Viriginia, USA
• Annik Wüthrich, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austrian Archaeological Institute, Vienna, Austria

An innovative account of the careers of the Nubians who occupied the Egyptian throne, written by a leading Egyptologist and author of Tutankhamun, King of Egypt

The region of Nubia—now spanning the modern border between Egypt and Sudan—was long a subject of Egyptian imperial domination by its ancient pharaohs. However, in the eighth century BC matters were suddenly reversed, when the kings of Kush, the ancient name for Nubia, became the overlords of Egypt for nearly a century, before being forced to withdraw in the face of Assyrian invasions. Yet the Kushite kingdom would endure back in its heartlands for another millennium, the heritage of its Egyptian sojourn still visible in its fields of pyramid-tombs.

This authoritative yet accessible book tells the story of these Nubian pharaohs of Egypt, from the origins of their kingdom of Kush, through their time as rulers of Egypt, to their heritage in the heart of Sudan—and their rediscovery in modern times. The latter uncovers some very unsavory examples of the racist attitudes of some earlier scholars. These engendered enduringly negative attitudes to aspects of careers of the Nubian pharaohs that find little support in the actual surviving evidence. The latter includes a fascinating network of texts from not only Egypt and Sudan, but also Assyria and the Bible, reflecting the interactions and conflicts of the period. There are also the standing monuments of Nubian pharaohs, ranging from temples they built throughout their dominions, to their tombs: pyramids, constructed in their ancestral heartland, in which Nubian and Egyptian funerary customs were intriguingly entangled.

Richly illustrated in full color throughout, this fascinating book by a leading Egyptologist will be essential reading for anyone interested in the lives and times of Egypt’s Nubian pharaohs.

A FOREIGN AFFAIRS BEST BOOK OF 2024

The gripping history of the devastation and resurrection of the Marshes of Iraq, an environmental treasure of the Middle East, now a protected site

The Mesopotamian Marshes in southern Iraq, once the largest wetland system on the planet, have been inhabited for thousands of years by the Ma‘dan, or Marsh Arabs, but they remain remote, isolated, and virtually unknown. In the early 1990s, the Saddam Hussein regime drained the Marshes and set out to destroy not only a critical ecosystem but a unique way of life as well. It stands as one of the greatest environmental and humanitarian disasters of the twentieth century. In the wake of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, local residents destroyed the earthen dams built to divert water from the wetlands and the Marshes were reflooded. Their future, however, is in peril.

The Ghosts of Iraq’s Marshes tells the history of the creation, destruction, and revitalization of the Marshes and their inhabitants against the backdrop of the dramatic events that have convulsed Iraq in the past fifty years. It follows the life of Jassim al-Asadi, an irrigation engineer who was jailed and tortured under Saddam Hussein and who subsequently dedicated his life to the reflooding and restoration of the Marshes. He eventually contributed to the Marshes being declared a UNESCO World Heritage site. Jassim is eminently relatable, and the stories of his life and other marsh dwellers are infused with pathos, tragedy, humor, and passion.

"A compendium of profound insights, garnered in all their granularity from varied aspects of Cairo's rich social life, which keeps the reader engrossed to the last page."—Contemporary Sociology

A rich examination of the securitization of the everyday lives of the citizens of Cairo and how to build a more equitable urban order

Until the year 2000, Cairo had been a model megacity, relatively crime free, safe, and public facing. It featured a thriving public culture and vibrant street life. In recent decades, however, the Egyptian state has accelerated a wholesale dismantlement of public education and public sector jobs and reversed the modest land reforms of the Nasser era. As a result, the vast majority of Cairo’s people have been forcibly deprived of their social rights, social goods, and educational capital.

Eschewing the traditional focus on top-down regime and state security, the contributors to this volume, who represent a wide array of academics, activists, artists, and journalists, explore how repressive policies affect the everyday lives of citizens. They show the ways in which urban security crises are politically fashioned and do not emanate from the urban social fabric on their own: city crime, violence, and fear are created by specific means of extraction, production, and control.

Another kind of city can live again. But how? By tackling a range of issues, including public health, transportation, labor safety, and housing and property distribution, Cairo Securitized unsettles simplistic binaries of thug and police, public versus private, and slum versus enclave, and proposes compelling new ways in which securitizing processes can be reversed, reengineered, and replaced with a participatory and equitable urban order.

Contributors:
Sara Soumaya Abed African Leadership Centre, Kings College London
Zeinab Abul-Magd Oberlin College, USA
Mohamed Ahmed Political Scientist and historian, Cairo Egypt
Rania Ahmed Independent Researcher, Cairo Egypt
Nicholas Simcik Arese University of Cambridge, UK
Ahmed Awadalla University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK
Ahmad Borham The American University in Cairo, Cairo Egypt
Miguel A. Fuentes Carreño University of California, Santa Barbara, USA
Roberta Duffield Scholar on urbanism, public space, Cairo Egypt
Momen El-Husseiny The American University in Cairo, Cairo Egypt
Mohamed Elmeshad SOAS, London UK
Ifdal Elsaket Netherlands-Flemish Institute, Cairo Egypt
Mohamed Elshahed Independent Writer and Curator, Mexico City
Amy Fallas University of California Santa Barbara, USA
Tina Guirguis University of California, Santa Barbara, USA
Elena Habersky The American University in Cairo, Cairo Egypt
Hanan Hammad Texas Christian University, USA
Hatem Hassan Impact Justice, Pittsburgh, USA
Amira Hetaba Federal Government of Lower Austria, Austria
Deena Khalil The American University in Cairo, Cairo Egypt
Omnia Khalil City University of New York, USA
Sabrina Lilleby University of Texas, Austin, USA
Paul Miranda Nonviolent Peaceforce, South Mosul, Iraq
Mostafa Mohie American University in Cairo, Cairo Egypt
Laura Monfleur University François-Rabelais, Tours, France
Aya Nassar Royal Holloway, University of London, UK
Nora Noralla human rights researcher, Berlin, Germany
Aly El Reggal Scuola Normale Superiore, Florence Italy
Afsaneh Rigot Harvard University, Cambridge USA
Yahia Saleh Malmö University, Sweden
Bassem al-Samragy political analyst at the International Criminal Court, The Hague, The Netherlands
Yahia Shawkat Technische Universität Berlin, Germany
Maïa Sinno Géographie Cités Lab, CNRS / Sorbonne University, Paris France
Mark Westmoreland Leiden University, The Netherlands

An innovative account of the life of Tutankhamun, the rediscovery of his existence, and the enduring impact of the finding of his tomb, by leading Egyptologist Aidan Dodson

The spectacular discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922 has given him an afterlife that has all but eclipsed the young king’s real career. This authoritative yet accessible book tells the story of Tutankhamun, from his own lifetime in the fourteenth century BC, down to modern times. It explores the various theories as to his parentage, his role in the ‘counter-reformation’ that followed the religious revolution of Akhenaten, and his premature death. It also looks at the monuments built during the king’s reign, his key officials, and the arrangements made for his funeral.

Moving forward in time, Tutankhamun, King of Egypt considers the way in which Tutankhamun was written out of official history. The story is then picked up again in the early nineteenth century AD when, with the first decipherment of hieroglyphs, Tutankhamun’s name could once again be read, and the problem of his place in history considered by Egyptologists. Aidan Dodson traces possible solutions through the decades as more and more data came to light, culminating in the discovery of the king’s tomb. Yet, dazzling as that discovery was, many matters regarding Tutankhamun remain obscure today, even with the aid of genetic data. Dodson also looks at how the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb brought about the first of many outbreaks of "Tut-mania," and explores some of its manifestations.

Richly illustrated in full color throughout, this fascinating book by a leading Egyptologist will be essential reading for anyone interested in the life and enduring legacy of ancient Egypt’s most famous king.

An illustrated cultural guide to the archaeological site of Amarna, the best-preserved pharaonic city in Egypt

Around three thousand years ago, the pharaoh Akhenaten turned his back on Amun, and most of the great gods of Egypt. Abandoning Thebes, he quickly built a grand new city in Middle Egypt, Akhetaten—Horizon of the Aten—devoted exclusively to the sun god Aten.

Huge open-air temples served the cult of Aten, while palaces were decorated with painted pavements and inlaid wall reliefs. Akhenaten created a new royal burial ground deep in a desert valley, and his officials built elaborate tombs decorated with scenes of the king and his city. As thousands of people moved to Akhetaten, it became the most important city in Egypt. But it was not to last. Akhenaten’s death brought the abandonment of his city and an end to one of the most startling episodes in Egyptian history.

Today, Akhetaten is known as Amarna, a sprawling archaeological site in the province of Minya, halfway between Cairo and Luxor. With its beautifully decorated tombs and vast mud-brick ruins, it is the best-preserved pharaonic city in Egypt.

This informed and richly illustrated guidebook brings the ancient city of Akhetaten alive with a keen insider’s eye, drawing on ongoing archaeological research and the knowledge and insight of Amarna’s modern-day communities and caretakers to explain key monuments and events, while offering invaluable practical advice for visiting the site. With over 150 illustrations, maps, and plans, Amarna is both an ideal introduction for visitors to Amarna and a window onto the extraordinary reign of Akhenaten.

Master story-teller and renowned Egyptologist, Aiden Dodson, reveals the secrets of Rameses III, in this fully-illustrated, accessible history, the first to exclusively cover this last great pharaoh, by the author of the bestselling, Sethy I

Rameses III—often dubbed the “last great pharaoh”—lived and ruled during the first half of the twelfth century bc, a tumultuous time that saw the almost complete overthrow of established order in the eastern Mediterranean, and among Rameses’s achievements was the preservation of Egypt as a nation-state in the face of external assault. However, his reign also saw economic challenges, and increasing dissatisfaction, which culminated in the king’s own assassination.

This richly illustrated book is the latest in a series that aims to provide accounts of key figures in ancient Egyptian history that covers not only their life-stories but also their rediscovery and reception in modern times. Accordingly, it follows the king from his birth to his resurrection through modern research, describing the key events of the reign, his major monuments, and the people and events that led to these becoming once again known to the world.

A richly illustrated account of the rulers of the first three dynasties of the ancient Egyptian civilization, written by renowned Egyptologist Aidan Dodson

The five centuries that followed the unification of Egypt around 3100 BC—the first three dynasties—were crucial in the evolution of the Egyptian state. During this time all the key elements of the civilization that would endure for three millennia were put in place, centered on the semidivine king himself. The First Pharaohs: Their Lives and Afterlives looks at what we know about the two-dozen kings (and one queen-regent) who ruled Egypt during this formative era, from the scanty evidence for the events of their reigns, through to their surviving monuments. It also considers how they were remembered under their successors, when some of the earliest kings’ names were attributed to allegedly ancient ideas and events, and the ways in which some of their monuments became tourist attractions or were even wholly repurposed.

Aidan Dodson recounts how two centuries of modern scholarship have allowed these rulers to emerge from an oblivion so total that some archaeologists had come to doubt their very existence outside the works of ancient chroniclers. Then, within a decade at the end of the nineteenth century, archaeological discoveries revealed a whole series of tombs and other monuments that not only confirmed these rulers’ existence, but also showcased the skills of Egyptian craftsmen at the dawn of history.

Christian–Islamic encounters through religious arts, architecture, and material culture in the medieval era

The coexistence of Christianity and Islam in the medieval Mediterranean led to an interchange of knowledge in architecture and material culture that went well beyond religious and geographical boundaries. The use of Islamic objects in Christian contexts, the conversion of churches into mosques, and the mobility of craftsmen are only some manifestations of this process. From crosses found in mosques to European-Christian coins with pseudo-shahada inscriptions, medieval material culture is rich with visual evidence of the two faiths intermingling in both individual objects and monuments.

In this volume, thirteen international scholars explore various aspects of pan-Mediterranean Christian-Islamic encounters in material culture and art, from textiles to precious oils, and from metalwork to ceramics, covering most of the Mediterranean, as well as parts of its extended hinterland, from Spain and Italy to Egypt and Georgia.

Within this frame, one of the most relevant, yet underexplored lines of investigation is that of the “aesthetic space,” the notion that aesthetic pleasure transcends boundaries, paving the way to a cross-religious experience and appreciation. “Indeed, God is beautiful, and He loves beauty,” as mentioned in a Hadith narration, a universal cry of visual beauty that resonates with all cultures and civilizations.

Contributors:
Paschalis Androudis Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece
Faruk Bilici Inalco, Paris, France
Maria Bormpoudaki Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports, Piraeus, Greece
Sami Luigi De Giosa University of Sharjah, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
Hélène Fragaki University of Augsburg, Augsburg, Germany
Hani Hamza Independent scholar, Cairo, Egypt
Ana Cabrera Lafuente Instituto de Turismo de España (Turespaña/Tourspain), Madrid, Spain
Alison Ohta Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, London, United Kingdom
Richard Piran McClary University of York, York, United Kingdom
Nino Simonishvili Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University, Tbilisi, Georgia
Nikolaos Vryzidis University of West Attica, Athens, Greece
Arielle Winnik Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, United States

A fascinating, richly illustrated study of the role and significance of ancient statues in Egyptian history and belief

Why do ancient Egyptian statues so often have their noses, hands, or genitals broken? Although the Late Antiquity period appears to have been one of the major moments of large-scale vandalism against pagan monuments, various contexts bear witness to several phases of reuse, modification, or mutilation of statues throughout and after the pharaonic period. Reasons for this range from a desire to erase the memory of specific rulers or individuals for ideological reasons to personal vengeance, war, tomb plundering, and the avoidance of a curse; or simply the reuse of material for construction or the need to ritually “deactivate” and bury old statues, without the added motive of explicit hostility toward the subject in question.

Drawing on the latest scholarship and over 100 carefully selected illustrations, Ancient Egyptian Statues proceeds from a general discussion of the production and meaning of sculptures, and the mechanisms of their destruction, to review the role of ancient statuary in Egyptian history and belief. It then moves on to explore the various means of damage and their significance, and the role of restoration and reuse.

Art historian Simon Connor offers an innovative and lucidly written reflection on beliefs and practices relating to statuary, and images more broadly, in ancient Egypt, showing how statues were regarded as the active manifestations of the entities they represented, and the ways in which they could endure many lives before being finally buried or forgotten.

The sumptuousness and grandeur of Nubian gold jewelry analyzed and illustrated for the first time

The fabled land of Nubia, whose very name means ‘gold,’ was famous in ancient times for its supplies of precious metal, exotic material, and intricate craftsmanship. Many of the adornments made in Nubia are masterpieces of the jeweler’s art—marvels of design and construction rivaling, and often surpassing, adornments made in Egypt and the rest of the ancient Mediterranean world. Although these unique treasures are among the most stunning to have survived from antiquity, they remain little known.

Richly illustrated with beautiful photographs of these exquisite items, many of them never before published, Nubian Gold also places the jewelry within the cultural contexts in which it was manufactured and employed. It tells the story not only of the treasures themselves but of the exciting tales of their discovery and the rich background of the exotic and remote civilizations that produced them.

The book also explores the innovative techniques used to procure the precious materials used in the jewelry and to craft them into intricate ornaments replete with magical purpose and coded meaning. Featured in the book are not only the intricately crafted pieces themselves but depictions of them in sculpture, relief, and painting as well as references to them in ancient texts, locating them within the full spectrum of Nubian history, from the earliest beginnings of society to the advent of Christianity.

The paradoxes of nineteenth-century colonialism in the Middle East revealed through the accounts of three working class European travelers to Egypt

This book tells the stories of two French women and a French African man, travelers connected to the Saint-Simonian utopian socialists, who came to work for the Egyptian government in the 1830s. They have been marginalized and excluded from the historical record, because they were women, not part of the colonial elite, or of mixed racial heritage. This history brings them alive through extensive archival research and vibrant storytelling.

There is Suzanne Voilquin, a practicing midwife in Cairo who was involved in left-wing popular politics in Paris and became the editor of one of the first feminist newspapers ever published (1832–34). The second traveler, Thomas Ismayl Urbain, was born in French Guyana, where his mother was born a slave and his father was a French sea captain. “Jehan d’Ivray” is the pen name of the third traveler, a teenage woman who married an Egyptian studying medicine in France, and traveled with him to Egypt in 1879. She wrote more than twenty books, including a retrospective look at Suzanne Voilquin and women in the Saint-Simonian movement, bringing the story full circle to another generation.

Their stories brilliantly illustrate the paradoxes of nineteenth century colonialism in Egypt. Suzanne Voilquin grew up in the Parisian working class and sympathized deeply with Egyptians but initially exoticized the differences between Egypt and her home country, while Urbain, a literary pioneer in black pride, nevertheless joined the French army and saw his role in the colonial occupation as a means of helping indigenous people. These characters transcend the neat binary of East and West and offer a rich, nuanced window onto the experiences of French travelers in Egypt during the nineteenth century.

"A masterpiece of seminal, meticulous, and groundbreaking scholarship."—Midwest Book Review

A richly nuanced analysis of how ancient Egyptian society regarded and dealt with pregnancy, mothers, birth, and children

In ancient Egypt, a woman’s primary role was that of mother, and as such she ensured her place within both her household and her community. And so, gods, doctor-magicians, as well as ghosts were all called upon to help the woman become pregnant.

Pregnancy was not without risks, and the many tests, prescriptions, and spells that have survived to this day help us to understand obstetrics as it was practiced in those distant times. Once the woman had eluded the ill will of Seth—who was held responsible for miscarriages—and had reached her term, she was faced with the much awaited and yet also feared moment of birth. The successful delivery of a child into the world was seen as a gift of the gods, but it did not mean that the parent’s worries were over. Indeed, it has been estimated that a third of all children did not reach the age of five years despite the combined efforts of parents and doctor-magicians to protect them.

Amandine Marshall draws upon a wealth of sources, including texts, images, iconography, artefacts, and children’s bodies themselves, as well as medicine, anthropology, and ethnography, to examine these issues and more, and in doing so sheds unprecedented light on the experience of maternity and early childhood in ancient Egypt.

A historical and contemporary study of Palestinian musicianship in exile in the Middle East, spanning half a century in disparate locations

Palestinian Music in Exile is a historical and contemporary study of Palestinian musicianship in exile in the Middle East, spanning half a century in disparate locations including Gaza, Turkey, Kuwait, and Egypt. Grassroots musicians emerge here as powerful actors, their stories taking center stage, offering critiques of existing conditions, and new perspectives on displacement and the transmission of Palestinian narratives, and presenting alternative visions for the future.

Louis Brehony argues that, under conditions of colonial relations and repeated displacement, the reclaiming of public space has gone hand in hand with aesthetic revolution, both broadening and traditionalizing the sounds of Palestine, and carrying messages of sumud (steadfastness) and resistance. Based on a decade’s research in Europe and the Middle East, this timely and inspiring collection of musical ethnographies provides a rich oral history of contemporary Palestinian musicianship and encompasses a broad range of experiences of the ghurba, or state of exile.

The first comprehensive treatment of one of Egypt’s most iconic pharaohs

King Sethy I (also transcribed as Seti, Sethi and Sethos) ruled for around a decade in the early thirteenth century BC. His lifetime coincided with a crucial point in Egyptian history, following the ill-starred religious revolution of Akhenaten, and heralding the last phase of Egypt’s imperial splendor. As the second scion of a wholly new royal family, his reign did much to set the agenda for the coming decades, both at home and abroad. Sethy was also a great builder, apparently with exquisite artistic taste, to judge from the unique quality of the decoration of his celebrated monuments at Abydos and Thebes. This richly illustrated book tells the story of Sethy's career and monuments, not only in ancient times, but in modern history, and the impact of his legacy on today’s understanding and appreciation of ancient Egypt.

Cutting-edge analysis on how to improve life inside the Gaza Strip through architecture and design, illustrated in full-color

The Gaza Strip is one of the most beleaguered environments on earth. Crammed into a space of 139 square miles (360 square kilometers), 1.8 million people live under an Israeli siege, enforcing conditions that continue to plummet to ever more unimaginable depths of degradation and despair. Gaza, however, is more than an endless encyclopedia of depressing statistics. It is also a place of fortitude, resistance, and imagination; a context in which inhabitants go to remarkable lengths to create the ordinary conditions of the everyday and to reject their exceptional status. Inspired by Gaza’s inhabitants, this book builds on the positive capabilities of Gazans. It brings together environmentalists, planners, activists, and scholars from Palestine and Israel, the US, the UK, India, and elsewhere to create hopeful interventions that imagine a better place for Gazans and Palestinians. Open Gaza engages the Gaza Strip within and beyond the logics of siege and warfare, it considers how life can be improved inside the limitations imposed by the Israeli blockade, and outside the idiocy of violence and warfare.

GOURMAND AWARD WINNER 2023, BEST ILLUSTRATED

A delightfully illustrated selection of 100 commonly used Egyptian food expressions

Can you guess what Egyptians mean when they say that something is “a peeled banana” or that someone is “sleeping in honey” or has "turned the sea to tahini"? You may find the answers quite unexpected when you open the pages of this delightful giftbook featuring some one hundred popular food-inflected phrases and sayings used by native speakers of Egyptian Arabic.

Idiomatic expressions lend color, dynamism, and humor to everyday speech, and convey complex ideas and beliefs with an economy of words that also tell us something about the culture from which they spring. Each expression in Fish, Milk, Tamarind is given in Arabic script and English transliteration followed by its literal and intended meanings, while humorous color illustrations throughout help readers visualize and remember the expressions. Learners and native speakers of Arabic, as well as Egypt enthusiasts and language lovers will find much in this book to teach, entertain, and enthrall them.

An authoritatively written overview of ancient Egyptian architecture from the point of view of an archaeologist and architectural historian

The monuments of ancient Egypt have held scholars and tourists in their thrall for centuries. The sheer mass of the pyramids of Giza, the interaction of the temples at Deir al-Bahari with the natural environment, and the use of light in the hypostyle hall of Karnak all make these buildings world-class masterpieces of architecture, rivaling those of Greece and Rome.

Ancient Egyptian Architecture in Fifteen Monuments presents an authoritative overview of Egyptian architecture from the point of view of an archaeologist and architectural historian with decades of fieldwork experience in Egypt and elsewhere. It focuses on fifteen selected masterpieces, from well-known structures such as the Bent Pyramid in Dahshur and the temple of Horus at Edfu to lesser-known monuments in Hierakonpolis, Abydos, Hawara, and Bubastis, each building representing an important stage in the development of Egyptian architecture and a different vision of what architecture should aspire to achieve.

Using sixty reconstruction drawings and black-and-white photographs, Felix Arnold presents new insights into form, meaning, and the organization of space, providing a fresh perspective on ancient Egyptian culture and society.

Illustrated publications and the role of market forces in shaping representations of Egypt at a time when European colonial interests in the region were at their peak, with 80 color and black and white illustrations

In the nineteenth century, following Napoleon Bonaparte’s 1798 campaign in Egypt, new possibilities of travel and improvements in printing technology saw an emergence of publishing ventures in France and Britain dedicated to the production of albums and travel accounts featuring images of Muslim Egypt and Islamic architecture and catering to a growing European fascination with the East.

Visualizing Egypt analyzes the context and process of production of these highly illustrated publications, from their conceptualization to the finished product and its afterlife, from marketing to the sales of these books, and from circulation to their reception by nineteenth-century audiences. By tracing the long, arduous, and often risky publishing journeys of the makers of these books, including publishers, writers, and artists, such as the Frenchman Émile Prisse d’Avennes, Paulina Banas reveals a complex terrain of changing market demands, collaborations, and conflicting views, and the unsettled authorship of these works, prompting us to think more profoundly about artistic and intellectual exchange in the world of nineteenth-century Orientalist book production.

Visualizing Egypt considers nineteenth-century book illustrations on Egypt and the “Orient” not merely as expressions of enduring ideology and colonial propaganda, but as representations shaped by the often-overlooked commercial exigencies of the growing publishing industry and the reckless competition within it.

A groundbreaking account of how the ancient Egyptians perceived children and childhood, from the Predynastic period to the end of the New Kingdom

There could be no society, no family, and no social recognition without children. The way in which children were perceived, integrated, and raised within the family and the community established the very foundations of Egyptian society. Childhood in Ancient Egypt is the most comprehensive attempt yet published to reconstruct the everyday life of children from the Predynastic period to the end of the New Kingdom. Drawing on a vast wealth of textual, iconographic, and archaeological sources stretching over a period of 3,500 years, Amandine Marshall pieces together the portrait of a society in which children were ever-present in a multiplicity of situations.

The ancient sources are primarily the expressions of male adults, who were little inclined to take an interest in the condition of the child, and the feelings of young Egyptians and all that touches on their emotional state can never be deduced from the sources. Nevertheless, by cross-referencing and comparing thousands of documents, Marshall has been able to explore how ancient Egyptians perceived children and childhood, and whether children had a particular status in the eyes of the law, society, and the Egyptian state. She examines the maintenance of the child and the care expended on its being, and discusses the kinds of clothing, jewelry, and hairstyles children wore, the activities that punctuated their daily lives, the kinds of games and toys they enjoyed, and what means were employed to protect them from illness, evil spirits, or ghosts.

Illustrated with 160 drawings and photographs, this book sheds unprecedented light upon the experience of childhood in ancient Egypt and represents a major contribution to the growing field of ancient-world childhood studies.

"A veritable roadmap, not only to the complex issues surrounding their reigns, but also to the tale of their modern rediscovery. "—Stephen P. Harvey, Ahmose and Tetisheri Project, Abydos

An innovative account of the lives and times of the ‘warrior king’ Thutmose III, and the female pharaoh Hatshepsut, by renowned Egyptologist Aidan Dodson

Thutmose III and Hatshepsut are among the best-known figures in Egyptian history. Thutmose has been called the “Napoleon of ancient Egypt,” during whose reign Egypt’s armies penetrated deep into northern Syria and consolidated Egyptian dominion over much of Sudan. Hatshepsut, one of the handful of female pharaohs, also took to the battlefield, but is best known today for a great trading expedition, down the Red Sea coast to the mysterious land of Punt.

At first, Hatshepsut served simply as regent for her young nephew-stepson Thutmose, but subsequently the two shared the throne of Egypt as co-pharaohs for over a decade. Later, as sole king, Thutmose devoted much of the rest of his life to military matters and large-scale building works, continuing the work of Hatshepsut that created much of the core of the great temple of Karnak. During the very last years of his life, Thutmose launched an attack on the memory of Hatshepsut, with most of her images destroyed. Yet, some four centuries later, Thutmose III and Hatshepsut were still remembered together as great figures of the past, whose conception of pharaonic kingship served as the model for later rulers, into the eighth century BC.

This book, illustrated in full color, traces what we know about the lives and times of Thutmose and Hatshepsut, and the monuments they built to guarantee their afterlives. It then explores their posthumous reputations in ancient times, and ends with the story of how the two pharaohs emerged from the mists of time during the nineteenth century AD, to resume their places in history.

"Hyperechios’ sayings deserve to be known better and making them available in English translation makes them fully accessible to scholars/readers of all abilities.” —Greg Peters, American Benedictine Review

“[S]tellar scholarship . . . a marvel . . . . This volume is a great basis for lectiodivina, for a retreat, for a class in the spiritual life and its vision and tools.” —Michael Plekon, Cistercian Studies Quarterly

Hyperechios's Exhortation to the Monks for the first time in English translation

Hyperechios is a little-known monk of the fourth to fifth centuries, who is thought to have lived in Roman Palestine, possibly coastal Sinai. He wrote the Exhortation to the Monks, 160 short sayings, much like the apophthegmata, or sayings of the desert fathers and mothers, but also structurally very different—most of the sayings are two lines of poetry that offer instruction.

The Exhortation, and early Christian monastic writings in general, teach that a spiritual life requires a life of training and practice, individually and as a neighbor and friend within one’s community. This volume studies Hyperechios’s Exhortation to better understand the moral and spiritual values in a fourth to fifth-century Christian monastic community, while reflecting also on how these are contemporary with the modern day. Drawing on modern works by scholars and placing the Exhortation in conversation with contemporary writers on the spiritual life, Tim Vivian begins with an introduction about Hyperechios, his location, the text, then a lengthy reflection on spiritual matters. He follows this with an English-language translation of the Exhortation and the Greek text, both accompanied by footnotes that offer biblical and patristic cross-references.

Exhortation to the Monks by Hyperechios will be of interest to scholars and general readers of early Christianity, early monasticism, and Christian spirituality, both ancient and contemporary.

2022 METROPOLITAN MUSEUM TOP MUSEUM-THEMED PICK FOR THE HOLIDAYS
2021 INTERNATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST

Wonder and imagination are at the heart of this story of a friendship between a boy from New York City and the boy king, Tutankhamun

A boy and his stuffed bunny gaze at a star-lit New York cityscape. The great Sphinx of Egypt sleeps. A child swings joyously across a river. This book offers a tantalizing glimpse of the adventures of Arthur and his imaginary friend, Bun-Bun. Together they travel through the Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum to another time and place and befriend the lonely boy king, Tutankhamun.

A new perspective on the dynamics of dynastic rule in the southernmost province of Egypt, from the Old Kingdom to the New Kingdom

The First Upper Egyptian nome, with its capital, Elephantine, was important in ancient times, as it stood on the southern border between Egypt and the Nubian provinces above the First Cataract. Since 2008, Alejandro Jiménez-Serrano has led an archaeological mission at the necropolis of Qubbet el-Hawa, where Elephantine’s high officials are buried. In Descendants of a Lesser God, he draws on textual records and archaeological data, together with new evidence from his work at the tombs, to cast fresh historiographical light on the dynastic dynamics of these ruling elites.

Jiménez-Serrano analyzes the origin of the local elites of Elephantine, and their role in trade and international relations with Nubia and neighboring regions, from the end of the Old Kingdom to the end of the Middle Kingdom. He explores the development of these power groups, organized as they were in complex households, which in many ways emulated the functioning of the royal court. Delving deeply into the funerary world, he also highlights the relationship between social memory and political legitimacy through his examination of the mortuary cult of a late Old Kingdom governor of Elephantine, Heqaib, who was transformed into a local divinity and later claimed as the mythic ancestor of the ruling family of Elephantine.

The history of ancient Egypt has traditionally been written from a court perspective. This new history of a strategically important region not only modifies existing perceptions of provincial life in the Middle Kingdom among the elites, but also introduces new evidence to support more complex and detailed reconstructions of the dynastic families in power.

“[A] remarkable journey.”—The Telegraph

The incredible life story of legendary cardiac surgeon and scientist Magdi Yacoub, an outsider who succeeded against the odds

Veteran journalists Simon Pearson and Fiona Gorman follow the remarkable life of heart surgeon Magdi Yacoub from his formative years in Egypt, through spectacular success at Cairo University, to his long and distinguished career in Britain. Although at times he clashed with the medical establishment in London, Yacoub pioneered great advances in heart surgery. He was knighted in 1992, and in 2014, he was awarded the highest honor in the gift of the Queen, the Order of Merit.

Written with unprecedented access and drawing on extensive interviews and research, the biography recounts how Yacoub transformed the treatment of children with congenital heart disease. He performed some of the first heart transplants in Britain and the first heart-lung transplants in Europe. At London’s Harefield Hospital, he created the greatest heart transplant center in the world. Among his patients are men and women who are still thriving more than thirty-five years after he gave them new hope.

This story is also about science, the development of new medical techniques, and a deeper understanding of how the human body works. Today, at an age when most people have long since retired, Yacoub is still pushing the boundaries of scientific understanding and surgical know-how. He is also taking heart surgery to places that until now have had little access to cardiac treatment, developing centers of excellence across Africa, including in Egypt, where his hospital in Aswan has an international reputation, and a new center is rising in Cairo.

Yacoub’s life is one of triumph and tragedy, success and failure, fierce criticism and high praise—it is also an enthralling journey through the worlds of scientific research and medical politics and ethics at the highest levels.

This book explores the long-term trends in the development of what was the first complex civilization in history, the Old Kingdom of Egypt (c. 2650–2200 BC), the period that saw the construction of eternal monuments such as Djoser’s Step Pyramid complex in Saqqara, the pyramids of the great Fourth Dynasty kings in Giza, and spectacular tombs of high officials throughout Egypt. 

The present study aims to show that the historical trajectory of the period was marked by specific processes that characterize most of the world’s civilizations: the role of the ruling elite, the growth of bureaucracy, the proliferation of interest groups, and adaptation to climate change, to name but a few—and the way that these processes held the germ of ultimate collapse. The case is made that the rise and fall of the Old Kingdom state is of relevance to the study of the anatomy of development of any complex civilization.

An intimate look at the true story of the funerary business of a Theban mortuary priest 2800 years ago as unearthed by an ancient papyrus

Petebaste son of Peteamunip, the choachyte, or water-pourer, lived during the first half of the seventh century BCE in the reigns of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty Kushite kings Shabaka and Taharqa and was responsible for the comfortable and carefree afterlife of his deceased clients by bringing their weekly libations.

But Petebaste was also responsible for a wide range of other activities—he provided a tomb to the family of the deceased, managed the costs of the personnel and commodities, and took care of all necessary paperwork, while also tending to the gruesome preparation of the mortal remains of the deceased.

Drawing on an archive of eight abnormal hieratic papyri in the Louvre that deal specifically with the affairs of a single family, Donker van Heel takes a deep dive into the business dealings of this Theban mortuary priest. In intimate detail, he illuminates the final stage of the embalming and coffining process of a woman called Taperet (‘Mrs. Seedcorn’) on the night before she would be taken from the embalming workshop to her final resting place, providing fascinating insight into the practical day-to-day aspects of funerary practices in ancient Egypt.

A groundbreaking historiography of the reign of Akhenaten

More ink has probably been spilled on Akhenaten and his times (‘the Amarna Period’) than any other figure from ancient Egypt, with a vast range of interpretations and theories that can leave the uninitiated utterly bewildered.

Against this background, Akhenaten: A Historian’s View examines what scholars have said over the years regarding key aspects of the period, to produce a ‘history of histories,’ exploring exactly how various chains of arguments were arrived at—and how houses of cards thus erected have subsequently come tumbling down. In particular, it teases out ideas based on solid documentation from those based on theory and fancy, and tracks ways in which new evidence became available, how it was interpreted, and how it fed—or didn't—into the big picture.

This book thus fills a major gap in the literature of the Amarna Period and also contributes to the wider, and much neglected, field of the historiography of ancient Egypt.

A comprehensive study of the iron objects found in Tutankhamun’s tomb that include daggers, quivers, arrows, and an elaborately decorated bow case

A century after Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon’s sensational discovery in 1922 of the virtually intact tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings, the boy-king and his treasures continue to fascinate people all over the world. Although nearly 5,400 objects accompanied the young pharaoh on his journey to the afterlife, many of them have not been investigated in detail.

Iron from Tutankhamun’s Tomb analyzes iron artifacts from the tomb in depth for the first time. This group consists of small iron chisels set into wooden handles, an Eye of Horus amulet, a miniature headrest, and the blade of a richly decorated golden dagger. The most important of these were placed in close proximity to the king’s mummy, emphasizing the high value attributed to this rare material in late Bronze Age Egypt—a time when iron smelting was not yet known in the land of the Nile.

Written by a research team of archaeologists, scientists, and conservators, this comprehensive study explores in fascinating detail the context and meaning of these artifacts, while establishing for the first time that Tutankhamun’s iron came from meteorites. They complete their examination with the results of chemical analyses, offering in the process a rich overall understanding of iron and its significance in ancient Egypt.

A multi-faceted account of Egyptian economic development by nineteen internationally recognized authorities and the critical challenges the economy is likely to face in the next twenty years

The Egyptian Economy in the Twenty-first Century addresses the question of why Egypt, despite possessing a plethora of assets—such as a fertile agriculture, a strategic geographic location, oil and gas deposits, innumerable tourist sites, a labor force prized by regional countries, and a diaspora that remits large amounts of funds—has seldom performed to its economic potential during the last sixty years. Indeed, economic weakness created political weakness, and often exposed the country to foreign diktats. What should the country do to change this state of affairs?

Nineteen internationally recognized authorities on the Egyptian economy discuss the critical challenges that the Egyptian economy is likely to face in the next two to three decades, challenges which must be overcome in order to improve the life of Egypt’s citizens and to protect the country from external pressures. Their analyses cover population and employment; development strategies; principal macroeconomic issues; development of a digital economy; fiscal and monetary matters; the external sector; poverty and income distribution; the enterprise structure; higher education; water availability; urbanization; institutional performance; and many others.

Contributors:
- Gouda Abdel Khalek, Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt
- Khaled M. Abu-Zeid, Regional Water Resources, CEDARE (Center for Environment and Development for the Arab Region and Europe), Cairo, Egypt.
- Fatma El Ashmawy, World Bank.
- Ragui Assaad, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA
- Izak Atiyas, Economic Research Forum, Cairo, Egypt.
- Marwa Biltagy, Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt.
- Lahcen Bounader, International Monetary Fund.
- Ishac Diwan, École Normale Supérieure, Paris, France.
- Ahmed Ghoneim, Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt.
- Khalid Ikram, Washington DC, USA.
- Karima Korayem, al-Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt.
- Heba el-Laithy, Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt.
- Noha el-Mikawy, Ford Foundation, Middle East and North Africa, Cairo, Egypt.
- Mohamed Mohieddin, Menoufia University, Menoufia, Egypt.
- Heba Nassar, Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt.
- Osman Mohamed Osman, Cairo, Egypt.
- Noha Razek, University of Regina, Canada.
- David Sims, Cairo, Egypt.
- John Waterbury, Princeton, New Jersey.

"An absolute necessity for anybody with an interest in pharaonic Egypt."—Kara Cooney, author of When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt

The discovery of ancient Egypt and the development of Egyptology are momentous events in intellectual and cultural history. The history of Egyptology is the story of the people, famous and obscure, who constructed the picture of ancient Egypt that we have today, recovered the Egyptian past while inventing it anew, and made a lost civilization comprehensible to generations of enchanted readers and viewers thousands of years later.

This, the third of a three-volume history of Egyptology, follows the progress of the discipline from the trauma of the First World War, through the vicissitudes of the twentieth century, and into Egyptology's new horizons at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Wonderful Things affirms that the history of ancient Egypt has proved continually fascinating, but it also demonstrates that the history of Egyptology is no less so. Only by understanding how Egyptology has developed can we truly understand the Egyptian past.

An authoritative account by preeminent Egyptologist Miroslav Verner covering over 70 of Egypt’s and Sudan’s pyramids, their historical and political significance, updated in a magnificent new edition

A pyramid, as the posthumous residence of a king and the place of his eternal cult, was just a single, if dominant, part of a larger complex of structures with specific religious, economic, and administrative functions. The first royal pyramid in Egypt was built at the beginning of the Third Dynasty (ca. 2592–2544 BC) by Horus Netjerykhet, later called Djoser, while the last pyramid was the work of Ahmose I, the first king of the Eighteenth Dynasty (ca. 1539–1292 BC).

Nearly two decades have passed since distinguished Egyptologist Miroslav Verner’s seminal The Pyramids was first published. In that time, fresh explorations and new sophisticated technologies have contributed to ever more detailed and compelling discussions around Egypt’s enigmatic and most celebrated of ancient monuments. In this newly revised and updated edition, including color photographs for the first time, Verner brings his rich erudition and long years of site experience comes to bear on all the latest discoveries and archaeological and historical aspects of over 70 of Egypt’s and Sudan's pyramids in the broader context of their more than one-thousand-year-long development.

Lucidly written, with 300 illustrations, and filled with gripping insights, this comprehensive study illuminates an era that is both millennia away and vividly immediate.

"How a female artisan became the Arab world’s top jewelry designer"—CNBC on Azza Fahmy

The inspiring personal story of an exceptional female artist and entrepreneur who overcame great obstacles to become one of the most recognized jewelers in the Arab world and an international luxury brand

In the Egypt of the 1970s, a young Azza Fahmy set out into the all-male world of Historic Cairo's jewelry district to apprentice as a silversmith. This was the start of a remarkable success story that would make her name an international luxury brand. With warmth and candor, she recalls a happy childhood in Upper Egypt, spent in the bygone world of postwar Egypt. This idyllic start to life ended abruptly with the death of her father, when Azza Fahmy was only thirteen, and the family was forced to move to Cairo, to begin a new life under much reduced circumstances.

It was a chance find at a book fair that changed the course of events for her—sparking a passion for silversmithing, and inspiring her to seek out the master craftsmen of Khan al-Khalili, the great craft district of Historic Cairo, and the nearby Sagha, or goldsmiths’ and silversmiths’ district. Through her intimate knowledge of these jewelry workshops, Azza Fahmy takes us through the quarter’s exquisite architecture and bustling alleyways, peopled with silversmiths, goldsmiths, brass workers, and artisans of every stripe, and lays out the indelible influence this now disappearing world has left on her acclaimed jewelry designs.

While Azza Fahmy’s story is one of great accomplishment, woven through it are her struggles as a single mother, a middle-class Egyptian, and a woman working in a man's profession. This memoir, a tribute to the people and places that shaped her creative imagination, is also an ode to the conviction that with hope and perseverance, anything is possible.

An alternative reading of the relationship between the state and smallholder peasants in mid-nineteenth-century Egypt

This book examines the rural history of Egypt during the middle years of the nineteenth century, a period that is often glossed over, or altogether forgotten. Drawing on a wide array of archival sources, some only rarely utilized by other scholars, it argues that state policy targeting the peasant land tenure regime was informed by the dual economic principles of the Ottoman, or traditional, philosophy of statecraft, and that the workings of the relevant regulations did not produce extensive peasant land loss and impoverishment.

Maha Ghalwash presents a rich, detailed analysis of such crucial issues as land legislation, tax impositions, the system of tax collection, modes of land acquisition, large-scale peasant abandonment of land, the emergence of surplus lands, the formation of large, privileged estates, distribution of village land, female land inheritance, and the nature of peasants’ political activity. In investigating these issues, she highlights peasant voices, experiences, and agential power.

Traditional interpretations of the rural history of nineteenth-century Egypt generally specify an avaricious state, so indifferent to peasant well-being that it consistently developed harsh policies that led to unremitting, extensive peasant impoverishment. Through an examination of the relationship between the absolutist state and the majority of its subject population, the peasant smallholders, during 1848–63, this study shows that these ideas do not hold for the mid-century period.

State, Peasants, and Land in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Egypt will be of interest to students of Middle East history, especially Egyptian rural history, as well as those of peasant studies, subaltern studies, gender studies, and Ottoman rural history.

A fresh perspective on the global economic influences that shaped modern Egypt through the history of an affluent Cairo suburb, Maadi

In the early years of the twentieth century, a group of Egypt’s real-estate and transportation moguls embarked on the creation of a new residential establishment south of Cairo. The development was to epitomize the latest in community planning, merging attributes of town and country to create an idyllic domestic retreat just a short train ride away from the busy city center. They called the new community Maadi, after the ancient village that had long stood on the eastern bank of the Nile.

Over the fifty years that followed, this new, modern Maadi would be associated with what many believed to be the best of modern Egypt: spacious villas, lush gardens, popular athleticism, and, most of all, profitability. Maadi: The Making and Unmaking of a Cairo Suburb, 1878–1962 explores Maadi's foundation and development, identifying how foreign economic privileges were integral to fashioning its idyllic qualities. While Maadi became home to influential Egyptians, including nationalists and royalty, it always remained exclusive—too exclusive to appeal to the growing number of lower-income Egyptians making homes in the capital. Annalise DeVries shows how Maadi’s history offers a fresh perspective on the global economic influences that shaped modern Egyptian history, as they helped configure not only the country’s politics but also the social and cultural practices of the well-to-do.

Ultimately the means of Maadi’s appeal also paved the path for its undoing. When foreign tax and legal privileges were abolished, Maadi, too, became untethered from a vision for Egypt’s future and instead appeared more and more as a figure of the country’s past.

An examination of the myriad lifetimes lived by ancient Egyptian artifacts

Egypt has a particular longue durée, a continuity of preservation in deep time, not seen in other parts of the world. Over the centuries, ancient buildings have been adopted for purposes that differed from the original. Temple sites have been transformed into places of worship for new deities or turned into houses and tombs. Tombs, in turn, have been adapted to function as human dwellings already in the Late Antique Period.

The Afterlives of Egyptian History expands on the traditional academic approach of studying the original function and sociopolitical circumstances of ancient Egyptian objects, texts, and sites to examine their secondary lives by exploring their reuse, modification, and reinterpretation.

Written in honor of the Egyptologist, Edward Bleiberg, this volume brings together a group of luminous scholars from a wide range of fields, including Egyptian archaeology, philology, conservation, and art, to explore the historical circumstances, as well as political and economic situations, of people who have come into contact with ancient Egypt, both in antiquity and in more recent times.

• Yekaterina Barbash, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY USA
• Lisa Bruno, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY USA
• Simon Connor, F.R.S.–FNRS, Brussels, Belgium and University of Liege, Liege, Belgium
• Kathlyn (Kara) Cooney, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA USA
• Richard Fazzini, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY USA
• Peter Lacovara, Ancient Egyptian Archaeology and Heritage Fund, Albany, NY USA
• Ronald J. Leprohon, University of Toronto, Canada
• Mary McKercher, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY USA
• Edmund Meltzer, Pacifica Graduate Institute, Carpinteria, California USA
• Joachim Friedrich Quack, Heidelberg University, Tiffin, Ohio USA
• Paul Edmund Stanwick, independent scholar, New York, NY USA
• Emily Teeter, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL USA
• Kathy Zurek-Doule, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY USA

A rich study, with new research data, on eighteen Ptolemaic period sarcophagi housed in museums in Cairo, including the Grand Egyptian Museum

The individually designed anthropoid sarcophagi of the Ptolemaic period (ca. 330–30 BCE) offer a particularly rich and varied repertoire of hieroglyphic inscriptions and religious scenes. Being at the end of a long tradition of funerary literature, many of the epigraphs on these objects are variations or reinterpretations of older texts that have been circulated and transmitted over millennia.

Others are entirely new creations that provide insight into funerary beliefs of late ancient Egypt. The present volume is the second and last publication of a joint project between scholars from Cairo University and the University of Tübingen on Late and Ptolemaic period sarcophagi housed in the museums of Cairo. It includes the detailed publication of eighteen sarcophagi, which until now have only been known through brief descriptions. The facsimile drawings, detailed pictures, translations, and commentaries presented here will allow scholars to approach this corpus with a broad range of research questions.

A beautifully illustrated study of mosaic art in Greco-Roman Egypt

The art of the mosaic was developed by the Greeks, notably within the royal court of Macedonia, and was initially unknown to the Egyptians. Macedonian mosaicists then established busy workshops in the capital, Alexandria, and in the new towns of Greek Egypt. Under the stimulus of commissions from the Ptolemaic court, these workshops soon showed that they were capable of innovation. Beginning with pebbles, they then used tesserae of different sizes, and adopted new materials (glass, faience, paint) in order to transpose onto the floor images from grand paintings, which was the major art form of the time and was characterized by the vivid use of color.

Alexandrian mosaicists were at the forefront of creativity during the Hellenistic period and their influence spread around the Mediterranean. After the Roman conquest of Egypt they adapted to the tastes of their new sponsors and to changes in architecture and were able to retain an important place within this art as it developed across the entire empire, in Rome and from east to west.

The Mosaics of Alexandria provides the first overview of the mosaics and pavements of Egypt that were created between the end of the fourth century BC and the sixth century AD. It presents a selection of some seventy mosaics and pavements from Alexandria and Greco-Roman Egypt. Generally little known and more often than not unpublished, these works are illustrated here in full color, some for the first time. The aim is to better understand the artistic and artisanal production of a type of decoration that played an important role within the living environment of the ancients.

A unique comic-illustrated exploration of the rich vocabulary derived from body parts in Arabic

We are all married to our bodies, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. As a result, the body is a hard-wired, powerful presence in thought and speech. Rooted in the Body: Arabic Metaphor and Morphology considers this basic premise of linguistic embodiment and shows how it is especially true of Arabic. Consciously and unconsciously, speakers of Arabic use reams of vocabulary derived from the body, making it an ideal springboard for a deeper and more nuanced understanding of Arabic morphology. Structurally speaking, Arabic is a language built on abstract roots, short sequences of single consonants that are systematically modified to produce actual vocabulary. Learning to recognize and manipulate those roots is an invaluable skill, especially for non-native adult learners, because it lightens their memorization load significantly.

Rooted in the Body uses delightful side-by-side essays and comic illustrations to invite readers to explore Arabic’s signature morphology as they reflect on some 120 metaphorically charged body parts. On the long road to proficiency, lexical precision is important, but so, too, is cultural fluency. As it demystifies the links between morphology and semantics, Rooted in the Body also uses citations from Arabic’s rich cultural history to highlight the body’s vital role in language. 

This book will be a fascinating and invaluable resource, not only for advanced learners of Arabic but for linguists, rhetoricians, and philosophers of language.

No matter where we come from, we all have our unique local expressions and proverbs that raise confused eyebrows when translated literally. These phrases usually carry humor and wisdom at their core, but are only fully understood in their native language. A Roving Eye explores some of these phrases and sayings from one of the world's most expressive tongues, Egyptian Arabic, the most widely spoken form of Arabic.

Including some one hundred popular phrases and proverbs, all linked to parts of the body and features of the face, A Roving Eye uses striking black-and-white photography to bring these expressions to life. The result is a book that will delight both learners and native speakers of Arabic, as well as lovers of Egypt who have little knowledge of the language. Each phrase or saying features a photograph, the original expression in Arabic, its transliteration, and its equivalents in English (both literal and proverbial). The whole book makes a perfect gift or a fun read for family and friends.

A sustained critique of postwar reconstruction in Syria as a politically neutral process

In 2011, emboldened by the Arab Spring, the Syrians rose up against their government. The Syrian regime used violence to suppress the protests, so that what began as pro-democracy protests eventually morphed into a civil war with heavy outside intervention. Today, the Assad regime has fallen, but large parts of the country lie in ruins, millions of Syrians are displaced, and the economy is in freefall. Reconstruction as Violence delves into the complex interplay of post-conflict reconstruction in Syria, challenging the traditionally held dichotomy between the end of violence and the commencement of rebuilding.

The contributors to this volume—architects, urbanists, geographers, and historians—employ critical concepts such as urbicide, domicide, and “civilian crisis architecture” to argue against the conventional theoretical frameworks that support a neat separation of phases. They illustrate how reconstruction often extends the dynamics of conflict into the urban and social realms, suggesting that the built environment becomes a battleground for further violence. They emphasize the importance of acknowledging the historical, economic, societal, legal, and bureaucratic contexts that shape reconstruction efforts, arguing for initiatives that prioritize equity, inclusivity, and community participation.

Reconstruction as Violence starkly underscores the authors’ stance that to overlook any of these dimensions, or to disengage from the reconstruction process altogether, represents a political choice with potentially detrimental effects on Syria and beyond in the Arab world, where countries like Palestine, Yemen, Libya, Iraq, Lebanon, and Sudan are undergoing similar cycles of destruction and rebuilding. It calls for a reimagined approach to reconstruction, one that fosters peace, resilience, and social justice in post-conflict societies.

Contributors:
Sawsan Abou Zainedin, Madaniya, London, UK
Ammar Azzouz, University of Oxford, UK
Valérie Clerc, Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, France
Emma Katherine DiNapoli, human rights lawyer, London, UK
Omar Ferwati, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK
Rim Lababidi, architect and independent scholar, Ohio, USA
Wendy Pullan, University of Cambridge, UK
Nasser Rabbat, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
Hashim Sarkis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
Deen Sharp, London School of Economics, UK
Heghnar Watenpaugh, University of California Davis, CA, USA

A social and political history of two decades of Egyptian neoliberalism through children’s picture books published in Egypt in the post-2000 era

Children’s picture books are some of the most transparently ideological materials available to parents and educators, and as cultural objects they are an expression of the zeitgeist of a particular era. They reveal much about the hopes, values, and aspirations of the society that produces them, as well as that society’s vision of its place in the wider world at large.

Children’s Picture Books and Contemporary Egyptian Society examines a new wave of Egyptian picture books that was published in the current century to see how these books responded to larger societal trends and transformations in Egypt, as well as to explore the ideologies that lie behind them. Yasmine Motawy argues that a host of factors, including the growth of gated communities and international schooling, the proliferation of lucrative literary awards, returning Gulf migrants, television dramas, and nationwide reading advocacy initiatives helped give rise to a new kind of children’s picture book in Egypt.

Motawy focuses on three clusters of selected picture books to investigate the extent to which these books reproduce hegemonic discourses or, alternatively, open up new horizons of childhood agency and societal transformation. The first cluster includes books that directly socialize the child by showing them ‘how things are done,’ in both the domestic sphere and the increasing globalized spaces that children frequent with their families. The second cluster aims at reframing cultural notions around femininity through the retelling of folk and fairy tales, while the third cluster addresses children's abilities to assess the impact of their actions on their environment, and invites them to examine their personal suitability to positions of power and stewardship.

A foundational text on the early modern history of Tunis that places Tunisian history firmly within Ottoman history

The Tunisian historiography of the modern era has broadly centered on a narrative of three successive powers: the pashas, first, followed by the deys (the "symbolic uncles" of the Turkish militia), who were in turn deposed by the beys (native civil rulers arising out of Hafsid times). This approach has provided all the components of a national narrative: it has posited the decline of the pasha’s authority as a consequence of the Tunisian province’s autonomy, and has framed the wars between deys and beys as a conflict of identity between the Turks and the locals.

While this linear story is seductive in its apparent coherence, it leaves several questions in the shadows, in particular, the interference of several external forces in the affairs of the province: most notably, the Ottoman Empire. The Regency of Tunis was effectively controlled by the Ottomans who had reactivated a former Hafsid institution, the mhalla. A kind of itinerant power, the mhalla succeeded in allowing the Ottomans to establish peace through the creation of tax regulations and matrimonial alliances with the tribes. Thus, the Regency of Tunis was able to distinguish itself from other imperial provinces through the founding of a monarchical house symbolically linked to the Empire and, at the same time, socially anchored in its territory.

Relying on local sources in Tunisian archives, Leïla Blili places the Regency of Tunis firmly within the Ottoman Empire, revealing the complex connections between the imperial center and its far-flung province, and challenging the long-standing theory of Tunisian autonomy. Blili's examination of social continuity during moments of intense political turbulence restores the place of women in the narrative of state formation, underlining the significance of the matrimonial politics of sovereigns and the crucial political and social roles women played in the regency.

A wide-ranging exploration of the daily lives of ordinary Coptic Christians, from late Antiquity until today

This volume brings together leading experts from a range of disciplines to examine aspects of the daily lived experiences of Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority from late Antiquity to the present. In doing so, it serves as a supplement and a corrective to institutional or theological narratives, which are generally rooted in studying the wielders of historical power and control.

Coptic Culture and Community reveals the humanity of the Coptic tradition, giving granular depth to how Copts have lived their lives through and because of their faith for two thousand years. The first three sections consider in turn the breadth of the daily life approach, perspectives on poverty and power in a variety of different contexts, and matters of identity and persecution. The final section reflects on the global Coptic diaspora, bringing themes studied for the early Coptic Church into dialog with Coptic experiences today. These broad categories help to link fundamental questions of socio-religious history with unique aspects of Coptic culture and its vibrant communities of individuals.

Contributors:
- Nicola Aravecchia, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, USA
- Mariam F. Ayad, The American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt
- Renate Dekker, Leiden, the Netherlands
- Lois M. Farag, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA
- Ihab Khalil, Coptic Museum of Canada, Scarborough, Ontario, Canada
- A.D. MacDonald, Sydney, Australia
- Ash Melika, California Baptist University, Riverside, California, USA
- Samuel Moawad, Institute of Egyptology and Coptology, Münster, Germany
- Helene Moussa, Coptic Museum of Canada, Scarborough, Ontario, Canada
- Alanna Nobbs, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
- Carolyn Ramzy, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
- Christina Thérèse Rooijakkers, Leiden University, Oegstgeest, the Netherlands
- Youhanna Nessim Youssef, Sankt Ignatios College, University College Stockholm, Sweden

An enchanted ring brings good fortune to an Egyptian oud player in this compelling novel combining elements of magical realism with political history

Can one man or a mere ring alter the events of one’s life and the history of a country? Combining elements of magical realism with momentous history, Suleiman’s Ring poses these questions and more in a gripping tale of friendship, identity, and the fate of a nation.

Alexandria, Egypt, on the eve of the 1952 Free Officers revolution. Dawud, a struggling musician, is summoned with his best friend Sheikh Hassanein to a meeting with Lt. Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser, who seeks their help as he mobilizes for the revolution. Dawud lends Nasser an enchanted silver ring for its powers to bring good luck. The revolution succeeds but Dawud soon grows estranged from Hassanein, who has joined the Muslim Brotherhood, after he suggests that Dawud leave Egypt since as a Jew he is no longer welcome. When Hassanein is arrested, however, destiny draws Dawud into a complex web of sexual intrigue and betrayal that threatens to upend his already precarious existence.

Set against the backdrop of the simmering political tensions of mid-twentieth-century Egypt and the Arab–Israeli wars, Sherif Meleka’s story of fate and fortune transports us to another time and place while peeling back the curtain on events that still haunt the country to this day.

Egypt, the birthplace of communal monasticism, has a rich store of monasteries and monastic art. Coptic Monasteries takes the reader on a tour of the best preserved and most significant of these ancient religious centers, documenting in exhaustive detail the richness and the glory of the Coptic heritage.
An informative introduction by Tim Vivian brings to life the early Christian era, with background information on the origins of the Coptic Church as well as its rites and ceremonies, sketches of some of monasticism’s founding figures, and accounts of some of the difficulties they faced, from religious schism to nomadic attacks.
Gawdat Gabra’s expert commentary, complemented by almost one hundred full-color photographs of newly restored wall paintings and architectural features, covers monasteries from Aswan to Wadi al-Natrun. Ranging across a thousand years of history, Gabra’s observations will make any reader an expert on the composition and content of some of Egypt’s most outstanding religious art, the salient architectural features of each monastery, as well as the ongoing process of restoration that has returned much of their original vibrancy to these works.
A unique and invaluable historical record, Coptic Monasteries is equally an in-depth, on-the-spot guide to these living monuments or an armchair trip back in time to the roots of one of the world’s oldest Christian traditions.

• Jedidiah Anderson, Furman University, Greenville, South Carolina, USA
• Amal Amireh, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, USA
• Kaveh Bassiri, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, USA
• Oyman Basran, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, USA
• Alessandro Columbu, University of Manchester, England
• Nicole Fares, independent scholar
• Robert James Farley, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA
• Andrea Fischer-Tahir, independent scholar
• Nouri Gana, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA
• Kifah Hanna, Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, USA
• Sarah Hudson, Connors State College, Warner, Oklahoma, USA
• Mohja Kahf, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, USA
• John Tofik Karam, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA
• Kathryn Kalemkerian, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
• Ebtihal Mahadeen, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
• Matthew Parnell, American University in Cairo, Egypt
• Nadine Sinno, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA

A richly annotated survey of writings by four of West Africa's most renowned Sufi scholars

Outsiders have long observed the contours of the flourishing scholarly traditions of African Muslim societies, but the most renowned voices of West African Sufism have rarely been heard outside of their respective constituencies. This volume brings together writings by Uthman b. Fudi (d. 1817, Nigeria), Umar Tal (d. 1864, Mali), Ahmad Bamba (d. 1927, Senegal), and Ibrahim Niasse (d. 1975, Senegal), who, between them, founded the largest Muslim communities in African history.

Jihad of the Pen offers translations of Arabic source material that proved formative to the constitution of a veritable Islamic revival sweeping West Africa in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Recurring themes shared by these scholars—etiquette on the spiritual path, love for the Prophet Muhammad, and divine knowledge—demonstrate a shared, vibrant scholarly heritage in West Africa that drew on the classics of global Islamic learning, but also made its own contributions to Islamic intellectual history. The authors have selected enduringly relevant primary sources and richly contextualized them within broader currents of Islamic scholarship on the African continent.

Students of Islam or Africa, especially those interested in learning more of the profound contributions of African Muslim scholars, will find this work an essential reference for the university classroom or personal library.

An unusually vivid first-hand account of early twentieth-century travel in Egypt

A collection of letters in a small painted box passed down through three generations of a London family is the starting point for a vivid account of a three-month journey up and down the Nile in a bygone age. The letters, like a time capsule, bring to life a lost world of Edwardian travel and social mores, of Egypt on the brink of the modern age, of the great figures of Egyptology, of aristocrats and archaeologists.

In 1907/08 Ferdinand Platt (known to his family as Ferdy) traveled to Egypt as personal physician to the ailing 8th Duke of Devonshire—one of the giant statesmen of the late Victorian age—and his family party, recounting his adventure in letters to his young wife in England. Throughout the journey Ferdy not only reported on the sights of the country around him, with his amateur Egyptologist’s eye, and the people he met along the way (including Howard Carter and Winston Churchill) but also recorded his private thoughts and intimate observations of a formal and stratified society, soon to be witness to its own extinction.

Introduced by Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson and Ferdy’s great-nephew Julian Platt, the letters open an intriguing window onto travel in Egypt during the Belle Epoque and the golden age of Egyptology.

Based on the Hamilton A.R. Gibb Lectures given by Nelly Hanna at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies of Harvard University, this groundbreaking book will be of interest to all those looking for a different perspective on the history of south–north relations.
Aiming to place Egypt clearly in the context of some of the major worldwide transformations of the three centuries from 1500 to 1800, Professor Hanna questions the mainstream view that has identified the main sources of modern world history as the Reformation, the expansion of Europe into America and Asia, the formation of trading companies, and scientific discoveries. She adds to the debate by showing that there were worldwide trends that touched Egypt, India, southeast Asia, and Europe: in all these areas, for example, there were linguistic shifts that brought the written language closer to the spoken word. She also demonstrates that technology and know-how, far from being centered only in Europe, flowed in different directions: for instance, in the eighteenth century, French entrepreneurs were trying to imitate the techniques of bleaching and dyeing of cloth that they found in Egypt and other Ottoman localities.

In the nineteenth century hundreds of thousands of Africans were forcibly migrated northward to Egypt and other eastern Mediterranean destinations, yet relatively little is known about them. Studies have focused mainly on the mamluk and harem slaves of elite households, who were mostly white, and on abolitionist efforts to end the slave trade, and most have relied heavily on western language sources. In the past forty years new sources have become available, ranging from Egyptian religious and civil court and police records to rediscovered archives and accounts in western archives and libraries. Along with new developments in the study of African slavery these sources provide a perspective on the lives of non-elite trans-Saharan Africans in nineteenth century Egypt and beyond. The nine essays in this volume examine the lives of slaves and freed men and women in Egypt and the region.

Contributors: Kenneth M. Cuno, Y. Hakan Erdem, Michael Ferguson, Emad Ahmad Helal Shams al-Din, Liat Kozma, George Michael La Rue, Ahmad A. Sikainga, Eve M. Troutt Powell, and Terence Walz.

Beginning with an examination of medieval Islamic fundamentalist movements such as Kharjism, Ibadism, Hanbalism, and Wahhabism, Sayed Khatab looks at the similarities and differences between them and present organizations such as al-Qa‘ida. It may be surprising that many of the radical narratives embraced by modern groups have not emerged recently. Identifying these roots can lead to a better understanding of al-Qa‘ida’s theological and intellectual narratives, and how they effectively indoctrinate youths and attract many of them to violent acts of terrorism.
The book then focuses on al-Qa‘ida’s theology, ideology, and tactics; the geographic contours and implications of al-Qa‘ida’s political strategy in relation to the western and eastern countries which are considered enemy states; the impending clash of cultures; and the ideological war within al-Qa‘ida.
Innovative in its concept, examining political Islamic thought from a historical to a contemporary perspective, Islamic Fundamentalism generates new understanding of the many complexities of political Islam, and the role of violence and terrorism.

Though Egypt was ruled by Turkish-speakers through most of the period from the ninth century until 1952, the impact of Turkish culture there remains under-studied. This book deals with the period from 1805 to 1952, during which Turkish cultural patterns, spread through reforms based on those of Istanbul, may have touched more Egyptians than ever before. An examination of the books, newspapers, and other written materials produced in Turkish, including translations, and of the presses involved, reveals the rise and decline of Turkish culture in government, the military, education, literature, music, and everyday life. The author also describes the upsurge in Turkish writing generated by Young Turk exiles from 1895 to 1909.

Included is a CD containing Appendices of extensive bibliographic information concerning books and periodicals printed in Egypt during this period.

The only fiction collection available in English translation by the Arab world's greatest short-story writer of the twentieth century

Yusuf Idris (1927–91), who belonged to the same generation of pioneering Egyptian writers as Naguib Mahfouz and Tawfiq al-Hakim, is widely celebrated as the father of the Arabic short story. He studied and practiced medicine, but his interests were in politics and the support of the nationalist struggle, and in writing—and his writing, whether in his regular newspaper columns or in his fiction, often reflected his political convictions. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize for literature more than once, and when the prize went to Naguib Mahfouz in 1988, Idris felt that he had been passed over because of his outspoken views on Israel. In all, Yusuf Idris wrote some twelve collections of superbly crafted short stories, mainly about ordinary, poor people, many of which have been translated into English and are included, along with an extract from one of his novels, in this collection of the best of his work.

A fascinating examination of the role of lighting in ancient Egyptian culture

Artificial lighting is one of the earliest tools used by humans. By the time we began to paint cave walls, we were producing lamps consisting of an illuminant, a fat or oil, and a wick, such as a strip of fabric or a piece of reed or wood.

Drawing on archaeological, textual, and iconographic sources, Meghan Strong examines the symbolic part that artificial lighting played in religious, economic, and social spheres in ancient Egyptian culture. From the earliest identifiable examples of lighting devices to the infiltration of Hellenistic lamps in the seventh century BC, Sacred Flames explores the sensory experience of illumination in ancient Egypt, the shadows, sheen, color, and movement that resulted when lighting interacted with different spaces and surfaces. The soft, flickering light from lamps or hand-held lighting devices not only facilitated the navigation of darkened environments, such as allowing workers to see in underground chambers in the Valley of the Kings, or served as temple offerings, but also impacted upon the viewer’s perception of a space and the objects within it.

Sacred Flames illustrates the active role that lighting played in Egyptian society, providing a richer understanding of the symbolic and social value of artificial light and the role of lighting in ritual space and performance in ancient Egyptian culture, while serving as a case study of the broader impact of artificial light in the ancient world.

Christianity and monasticism have flourished in Upper Egypt from as early as the fourth century until the present day. The contributors to this volume, international specialists in Coptology from around the world, examine various aspects of Coptic civilization along the Nile Valley from Nag Hammadi (associated with the famous discovery of Gnostic papyri) through Luxor and Coptos and south to Esna over the past seventeen hundred years, looking at Coptic religious history, tradition, language, heritage, and material culture in the region through texts, art, architecture and archaeology.
Contributors: Iwona Antoniak, Heike Behlmer, Ramez Boutros, Renate Dekker, Marianne Eaton-Krauss, Stephen Emmel, Cäcilia Fluck, Gawdat Gabra, James E. Goehring, Martin Krause, Bishop Martyros, Nashaat Mekhaiel, Howard Middleton-Jones, Samuel Moawad, Ashraf Nageh, Fr. Angelous el-Naqlouny, Elisabeth R. O’Connell, Tonio Siegfried Richter, Adel F. Sadek, Ashraf Alexandre Sadek, Fr. Bigoul al-Suriany, Matthew Underwood, Jacques van der Vliet, Gertrud J.M. van Loon, Fr. Awad Wadi, Youhanna Nessim Youssef

A rich interdisciplinary study of the relationships between space, both physical and virtual, and social and political participation

Where do people meet, form relations of trust, and begin debating social and political issues? Where do social movements start? In this fascinating collection, scholars and activists from a wealth of disciplinary backgrounds, including sociology, anthropology, history, and political science, take a fresh look at these questions and the factors leading to political and social change in the Arab world from a spatial perspective. Based on original field work in Egypt, Kuwait, Morocco, and Palestine, Spaces of Participation connects and reconnects social, cultural, and political participation with urban space. It explores timely themes such as formal and informal spaces of participation, alternative spaces of cultural production, space reclamation, and cultural activism, and the reconfiguring of space through different types of contestation. It also covers a range of spaces that include sports clubs, arts centers, and sites of protest and resistance, as well as virtual spaces such as social media platforms, in the process of examining the relationships and tensions between physical and virtual space.

Spaces of Participation underlines the temporal and transformative quality of participatory spaces and how they are shaped by their respective political contexts, highlighting different forms of access, control, and contestation.

A unique, richly illustrated study of Ottoman religious buildings standing today in Cairo

With the conquest in 1517 CE of Egypt by the Ottomans, Cairo lost its position as the capital of the Islamic empire to Istanbul but it retained an eminent position as the second most important city, with Egypt still regarded as one of the wealthiest provinces of the new empire. Round minarets with pointed hoods, as symbols of the new rulers, began filling the landscape alongside the octagonal minarets with pavilion tops of the Mamluks, new mosques, zawiyas, and madrasas/takiyas were built to emphasize the continuation of Sunni Islamic rule, while the use of tiles imported from Turkey introduced new decorative styles to the city’s existing rich carvings and marble paneling.

This book invites readers and students to revisit a long-overlooked era of Cairo’s architectural evolution, offering a unique, comprehensive study of Ottoman religious buildings still standing today. It provides detailed descriptions and walk-throughs of the buildings covered, visually, through its rich collection of plans, line drawings, and photographs, and through the narrative that infuses each image with life, shedding light on the continuous evolution of architecture in Cairo even after the city had ceased to be the capital of the Islamic empire.

An essential study of parliamentary politics in postwar Iraq and Syria, before the consolidation of authoritarian rule under the Ba’th Party

When Parliaments Ruled the Middle East explores three main interrelated issues to clarify what happened between 1946 and 1963 in Iraq and Syria: how and why a parliamentary system prevailed in both countries in the aftermath of the Second World War; what social effects this system triggered, and, in turn, how these changes affected the system; and finally, why the elites in both countries were unable to overcome the unrest that brought an end to both a liberal era and to a certain kind of political game.

Drawing on a vast array of sources and rich archival research in French, English, and Arabic, Matthieu Rey highlights the processes of the parliamentary system in the modern era, which are very common to post-independence countries and to any representative regime. He tackles the intersection of multifaceted political phenomena that were present in that moment in Iraq and Syria, including regular elections, the implementation of emergency law, the freedom of the press, the open expression of opinions, the formation of new political parties, frequent military coups, and the joint exercise of power by members of the old classes and reformist newcomers.

Treating this period as neither an epilogue of the liberal order nor a prelude to authoritarianism, and stressing the contingent, improvisatory aspects of political history, Rey fundamentally questions the transitional nature of the period and in doing so proposes new ways and tools of examining it.

A meticulous deconstruction of Maronite history writing and the ways in which Lebanese nationalist myths have been invented and perpetuated by historians

As a frequently contested territory, Mount Lebanon has an equally contested history, one that is produced, shaped, and revised by as many players as those who molded the Lebanese state since its inception in 1920. The Lebanese Maronite Church has had more at stake in the process of history writing than any other group or institution. It is arguably one of the most influential institutions in Lebanese history and definitely the most influential institution in the country at the moment of the state’s birth.

Writing the History of Mount Lebanon traces the genealogy of Maronite identity by examining the historical traditions that shaped its contemporary manifestation. It explores the presence of a tradition in Maronite Church historiography that was maintained by the historians of the Church, whose claims and hypotheses ultimately defined the communal identity of the Maronites in Mount Lebanon and deeply influenced subsequent Lebanese national identity. Rooted in a reexamination of the existing literature and bringing evidence to bear on this particular aspect of history-writing in Lebanon, it shows how early Maronite ecclesiastic historiography’s plea for inclusion as a part of Catholic orthodoxy was transformed and recast in subsequent centuries by lay and secular historians into a demand for exclusion and exclusivity, which in turn led to the rise of exclusivist political identities based on sectarian belonging in Mount Lebanon.

Ultimately, Mouannes Hojairi shows how history-writing is one of the main instruments in generating and perpetuating nationalist ideologies and how historians are central agents of nationality.

A stunning photographic compilation of Egypt’s abandoned palaces and grand buildings

Between 1860 and 1940, Cairo and other large cities in Egypt witnessed a major construction boom that gave birth to extraordinary palaces and lavish buildings. These incorporated a mix of architectural styles, such as Beaux-Arts and Art Deco, with local design influences and materials. Today, many lie empty and neglected, rapidly succumbing to time, a real-estate frenzy, and an ongoing population crisis.

In 2006 Russian-born photographer Xenia Nikolskaya began the process of documenting these structures. She gained exceptional access to them, taking photographs at some thirty locations, including Cairo, Alexandria, Luxor, Minya, Esna, and Port Said. These photographs were documented in the first edition of Dust: Egypt’s Forgotten Architecture, which soon after its release in 2012 became a rare collector’s item.

This revised and expanded edition includes photographs from the first edition together with extra unseen images and new photographs taken by Nikolskaya between 2013 and 2021. It also includes previously unpublished essays by Heba Farid, co-owner of the Cairo-based photo gallery Tintera, and architect and urban planner Omar Nagati, co-founder of CLUSTER, an urban design and research platform also in Cairo.

Dust: Egypt's Forgotten Architecture leads us seductively into some of the most breathtaking architectural spaces of Egypt's recent past, filled with a sense of both the immense weight and the impermanence of history.

A history of urban modernity in Cairo through cinema which "makes us see makes us see the movies in a whole new way" (Chris Berry, King’s College London)

The relationship between the city and cinema is formidable. The images and sounds of the city found in movies are perhaps the only experience that many people will have of cities they may never visit. Films influence the way we construct images of the world, and accordingly, in many instances, how we operate within it. Cinematic Cairo: Egyptian Urban Modernity from Reel to Real offers a history of Cairo’s urban modernity using film as the primary source of exploration, and cinematic space as both an analytical tool and a medium of critique. Cairo has provided rich subject material for Egypt’s film industry since the inception of the art form at the end of the nineteenth century. The “reel” city—imagined, perceived, and experienced—provides the spatial domain that mirrors change and allows for an interrogation of the “real” city as it encountered modernity over the course of a century.

Bringing together chapters by architects and art and literary historians, this volume explores this parallel and convergent relationship through two sections. The first uses films from the 1930s to the end of the twentieth century to illustrate the development of a modern Cairo and its modern subjects. The second section is focused on tracing the transformation of the cinematic city under conditions of neoliberalism, religious fundamentalism, and gender tensions. The result is a comprehensive narrative of the urban modernity of one of the most important cities in the Arab world and Global South.

Contributors
Ahmed H. AbdelAzim, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
Khaled Adham, Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin, Germany
Kinda AlSamara, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia
Nezar AlSayyad, University of California, Berkeley, USA
Doaa Al Amir, October 6th University, Cairo, Egypt
Mirette Aziz, Misr International University, Egypt
Muhammad Emad Feteha, The American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt
Farah Gendy, Raef Fahmi Architects, Cairo, Egypt
Hala A. Hassanien, Architect, Wasl, Cairo, Egypt
Tayseer Khairy, Arab Academy for Science Technology & Maritime Transport, Cairo, Egypt
Mariam Marei, The American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt
Ameer Saad, Architect, Dar Al-Handasa, Cairo, Egypt
Heba Safey Eldeen, Misr International University, Cairo, Egypt
Mohammad Salama, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, USA
Nour Sobhi, Misr International University, Cairo, Egypt
Sherin Soliman, Misr International University, Cairo, Egypt

A bold firsthand account of one of the persistent Arab uprisings, in Yemen

At its beginning in 2007, the Southern Movement in South Yemen was a loose merger of different people, most of them former army personnel and state employees of the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY) who were forced from their jobs after the war in 1994, only four years after the unification between the PDRY and the Yemen Arab Republic.

This bold ethnographic account of a persistent Arab uprising, in a rarely studied corner of the Middle East, explores why the Southern Movement has grown so tremendously during the last decade, and how it developed from a primarily social movement demanding social rights into a mass protest movement claiming independence for a state that had long vanished from the world map. Anne-Linda Amira Augustin asks why so many young people born after 1990 joined the movement and demanded the re-establishment of a state that they had never themselves experienced.

At the core of South Yemeni resistance lies the transmission from generation to generation of a dominant counternarrative, which may be seen as the continuation and rehabilitation of the PDRY’s national narrative. This narrative, amplified through everyday communication in families and neighborhoods, but also by media-makers, journalists, school and university teachers, civil society actors, and by the movement’s activists, opposes the national-unity narrative of the Republic of Yemen and intensifies the demands for an independent state.

Four translations of major accounts of the life of the fourth-century Egyptian desert father St. Bishoi, in one volume

Saint Bishoi of Scetis (d. ca. 417) enjoys tremendous popularity throughout the Christian east, particularly among the Copts. He lived during a remarkable era in which a litany of larger-than-life monastics lived and interacted with one another. Even then, Bishoi stood out as the founder of one of the four great monasteries of Scetis (Wadi al-Natrun): those of Macarius, John the Little, Bishoi, and the Baramus. Yet in spite of Bishoi’s prominence, the various recensions of his hagio-biography have received sporadic, scattered attention.

The Life of Bishoi joins other Lives of eminent monastics of early-Egyptian monasticism: the Lives of Antony, Daniel, John the Little, Macarius, Paphnutius, Shenoute, and Syncletica. These Lives are vital for what they tell us about monastic politeia (way of life), spirituality, and theology, both of the early monastics and of those who later wrote, translated, and revised the Lives. They appeared first in Greek and Coptic, and later generations translated and revised them into Syriac, Arabic and Ge‘ez (Ethiopic).

This definitive volume contains the first English translation of the Greek, Syriac, Arabic, and Ethiopic Lives of Bishoi, each translation accompanied by an introduction that focuses on certain aspects of the source text. It also has the first transcription and English translation of an important early Greek text. The General Introduction provides rich context about the texts and textual traditions in the various languages, and thoroughly revises our knowledge about the Syriac tradition, the translation of the Syriac text here now consequently providing what is the best translation in any modern language.

Tim Vivian, California State University, Bakersfield

Maged S.A. Mikhail, California State University, Fullerton

Rowan Allen Greer III (1935–2014), an Episcopal priest and Walter H. Gray Professor of Anglican Studies at Yale Divinity School, was author of Broken Lights and Mended Lives: Theology and Common Life in the Early Church and Anglican Approaches to Scripture: From the Reformation to the Present.

Robert Kitchen is a retired minister of the United Church of Canada, living in Regina, Saskatchewan. He read for the D.Phil. (Oxford) in Syriac Language and Literature and has taught Syriac studies in Sweden and Austria.

Apostolos N. Athanassakis was Argyropoulos Chair in Hellenic Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The extraordinary story of how an obelisk from the banks of Luxor was transferred to the Place de la Concorde in Paris in the early 19th century

Transporting the Luxor obelisk from Egypt to Paris was one of the great engineering triumphs of the early nineteenth century. No obelisk this size (two hundred and fifty tons) had left Egypt in nearly two thousand years, and the task of bringing it fell to a young engineer, Apollinaire Lebas, a man of extraordinary resolve and ability. His is a tale of adventure, excitement, and drama, but one hardly known to the English-speaking world.

Lebas’ team was struck by the plague; they ran out of wood; they had to wait four months for the Nile to rise to free their beached ship. But in the end, The Luxor, with its precious cargo on board, sailed down the Nile. On October 25, 1836 before two hundred thousand cheering Parisians, Lebas raised his obelisk. He was rewarded handsomely by his king, a medal with his name on it was struck, and his body lies in the famous Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris along with French luminaries. Now this first-ever translation of Lebas’s account, including digitally enhanced copies of his beautiful drawings, makes his remarkable story available to a wide audience.

The story of urban, rural, and desert jewelry in modern Egypt, in a beautifully designed new edition

For many women of Egypt, their jewelry is their bank—they wear their wealth in their gold. But jewelry in Egypt is also more than mere assets, and its design and manufacture reveal a great array of styles and a high degree of skill and artistry. In this lavishly illustrated book, Azza Fahmy, herself a world-renowned designer of jewelry based on traditional motifs, lays before us an Aladdin’s cave of jewelry made in all corners of Egypt over the last one hundred years, collected through her extensive travels throughout the country.

From the farms and villages of the Nile Valley and Delta, from the oases of the Western Desert and the mountains and wadis of Sinai and the Eastern Desert, from Nubia in the south, and from the crowded traditional neighborhoods of Cairo is displayed a cornucopia of gold and silver adornment—each area with its own distinctive favored style. Personal seals have been widely employed, and there is even jewelry for special occasions, such as the appeasement of malignant spirits, and for animals.

In this completely redesigned edition of her bestselling book, in a new and elegant format, the author not only documents all these varieties and illustrates them with the finest examples, she also describes the techniques and skills involved in their production and the materials used, and recounts her own journey of learning as she apprenticed with the leading master jewelers to become the best known jeweler in Egypt, whose work is worn by world leaders, royalty, and connoisseurs of jewelry around the globe.

The travel accounts, drawings, and collections of Frédéric Cailliaud were an important early contribution to the birth of the new scientific discipline of Egyptology in the first half of the nineteenth century. But one of his major works—on the arts and crafts of ancient Egypt—was never published. For the first time here, his exquisite color plates are presented alongside a translation of his original French text describing them. Explanatory material by Andrew Bednarski and other scholars puts the work in context.
Arriving in Egypt in 1815, Cailliaud embarked upon a series of explorations that included the rediscovery of the Roman emerald mines at Mount Zabora and ancient routes to the Red Sea, and expeditions in the Eastern and Western Deserts and the land we know today as Ethiopia. He made copious notes on the flora and fauna, people and antiquities he saw, and took a collection of over two thousand objects back to France. Cailliaud’s beautifully rendered watercolors of scenes on ancient Egyptian tombs and temples (viewed before Champollion’s deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphs) show animated scenes of ancient daily life, with which he draws parallels to the nineteenth-century activities he observed around him.
This is a work that will appeal not only to Egyptologists (professional and amateur), but also to historians, art historians, and readers interested in design. The original French text, never before published, is included in electronic form.

The English novelist E.M. Forster and the Greek–Alexandrian poet C.P. Cavafy met when Forster was working for the Red Cross in Alexandria during the First World War. Their subsequent correspondence bears witness to a complex relationship and serves as a fascinating testament to Forster’s relentless determination to promote Cavafy by bringing out an English translation of his work. The letters also chronicle Cavafy’s calculated refusal to comply fully with Forster’s plans. The story they tell involves a number of major twentieth century literary personalities—Arnold Toynbee, T.S. Eliot, T.E. Lawrence, and Leonard Woolf all participated in Forster’s early translation project. Forster ultimately succeeded in launching Cavafy’s reputation in the English-speaking world, setting an important precedent for his present global literary fame.
The volume includes all extant letters, the earliest Cavafy translations by George Valassopoulos (incorporating Cavafy’s own authorial emendations), poems by E.M. Forster, archival photographs, and related letters.

A highly illustrated study of the uniquely decorated tombs of Greco-Roman tombs in Alexandria with the aid of advanced computer technology

In the Greco-Roman catacombs of Alexandria, uniquely decorated tombs from the time when religious boundaries blurred and syncretistic beliefs flourished have long been known. But it was only in 1993 that researchers discovered faint traces of paintings on walls previously thought to be blank, or underneath other painted scenes: the hidden scenes could be partly made out and photographed using ultraviolet light. Then in 2012, new computer technology was used to reveal the lost images—and colors—even more clearly.

Here the team present, examine, and interpret what they found, teasing meaning and intent from the alternating scenes of Greek and Egyptian mythology, as employed by the citizens of a multicultural Alexandria at the beginning of the second century CE, in pursuit of a happy afterlife.

In a major addition to the academic library on the cinema of Youssef Chahine and on Arab and Egyptian cinema in general, Malek Khouri here presents the most comprehensive and up-to-date study on Chahine’s work to appear since his death in 2008. The methodological approach of the book, and more precisely the discussion of the theme of Arab national unity from a post-colonial point of view, emphasizes the ideological underpinnings of this Egyptian director’s themes as well as his esthetics. The author focuses on the interaction between Chahine’s personal and political preoccupations, his eclectic cinematic style, and his devotion to connecting with a wide audience of filmgoers.
The Arab National Project in Youssef Chahine’s Cinema is an important contribution to original scholarship in the fields of cultural studies, sociology of film, and history of cinema, and will be of great interest to scholars, students, and cinema lovers all over the world.

Ahmad ibn Tulun (835–84), the son of a Turkic slave in the Abbasid court of Baghdad, became the founder of the first independent state in Egypt since antiquity, and builder of Egypt’s short-lived third capital of the Islamic era, al-Qata’i‘ and its great congregational mosque. After recounting the story of Ibn Tulun and his successors, architectural historian Tarek Swelim presents a topographic survey of al-Qata’i‘, a city lost since its complete destruction in 905. He then provides a detailed architectural analysis of the Mosque of Ibn Tulun, which was spared the destruction and is now the oldest surviving mosque in Egypt and Africa, from the time of its completion until today. Rare archival illustrations and early photographs document the changing appearance and uses of the mosque in modern times, while extraordinary 3D computer renderings take us back in time to recreate its architectural development through its early centuries. Plans, drawings, and maps complement the history, while striking modern color photographs showcase the elegant simplicity of the building’s architecture and decoration.
This definitive and generously illustrated book will appeal to scholars and students of Islamic art history, as well as to anyone interested in or inspired by the beauty of early mosque architecture.

Based on the personal journals of Robert Grenville Gayer-Anderson (1881–1945), Egyptologist, poet, surgeon, soldier, psychic, and noted collector, this candid and charming historical biography tells of Gayer-Anderson’s strange and eclectic life in the final days of the British empire.
As a child, he crossed an unforgiving America with his entrepreneurial and eccentric Irish parents. As a man, he immersed himself in the Arab way of life as colonials seldom did; he saw ghosts and witches, sailed the Nile, wrestled Turks and crocodiles, fought at Gallipoli, smoked opium, performed surgery in the desert, gathered and cared for artefacts and boys in his Cairene home, survived an assassination attempt and, in the name of science and Henry Wellcome, in flowery glades he boiled the flesh from the skulls of Nuba warriors. His personal journals are filled with frank accounts of his exploits and of the illustrious and colorful people who wandered by: Lawrence of Arabia, Gordon, Kitchener, Conan-Doyle, Eric Gill, and Stephen Spender, among others.
Drugs, race, class, family, sex, and selfhood are vividly mixed in this tale of two wars, colonial life, medicine, anthropology, and psychic phenomena. The stiff-upper-lipped ritual of a very British upbringing vied with his Romantic and consuming love of beauty, vividly embodied in the Gayer-Anderson Museum in Cairo, which to this day houses his vast collection of carpets, furniture, glassware, and other curios.

Christianity began in the large and fertile Fayoum oasis of Egypt’s Western Desert as early as the third century, and its presence has endured to the present day. This volume, which constitutes a tribute to the scholarly work of the father of modern Coptology, Martin Krause, contains contributions on various aspects of Coptic civilization in Egypt’s largest oasis over the past eighteen hundred years. The contributors are all international specialists in Coptology, from Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, and the United States. A number of the studies included in this volume deal with recent archaeological discoveries at Deir al-Banat, the early Christian graves in the necropolis at the eastern edge of the Fayoum, and the monastic settlements and medieval Coptic cemetery at Naqlun. Others provide thorough examinations of archaeological sites at Karanis, Tebtunis, and Naqlun. Contributions cover the rich Christian literary heritage in Greek, Coptic, and Arabic, while art historians touch on the famous Fayoum portraits and their influence on the production of Coptic icons, as well as on the medieval wall paintings at Naqlun and in textiles, metal objects, and basketry from the region. This important volume provides for the first time an up-to-date, comprehensive treatment of Christianity and monasticism in the Fayoum Oasis.
Contributors: Father Bigoul al-Suriany, Roger S. Bagnall, Dominique Bénazeth, Anne Boud’hors, Ramez Boutros, Karl-Heinz Brune, Barbara Czaja-Szewczak, Stephen Davis, Stephen Emmel, Cäcilia Fluck, Wodzimierz Godlewski, Wilfred C. Griggs, Peter Grossman, Alexi Krol, Suzana Hodak, Anetta Lyzwa-Piber, Ewa Parandowska, Siegfried G. Richter, Marie-Hélène Rutschowscaya, Sofia Schaten, Zuzana Skalova, Jacques Van der Vliet, Youhanna Youssef.

Despite dictatorship, international sanctions, and the ravages of war, Baghdad endures with a surprisingly exceptional modern architectural heritage. This beautifully illustrated study reveals the splendors of early twentieth-century architecture that still stand on the streets of Iraq’s capital.
Caecilia Pieri’s documentation foregrounds the physical reality of modern Baghdad, very different from the image that we normally receive from the media. She draws on a number of unpublished sources and documents to present Baghdad’s architecture in a historical perspective, and her striking photographs taken between 2003 and 2006 document the residential areas of the twentieth-century city, providing an unprecedented resource for historians, urban planners, and general readers interested in discovering a new face of a world capital. With essays by Rifat Chadirji, Ihsan Fethi, and Naïm Kattan.

A lushly illustrated gazetteer of the archaeological sites of southern Egypt and northern Sudan and named a 2012 American Publishers (PROSE) Awards winner for Best Archaeology & Anthropology Book

For most of the modern world, ancient Nubia seems an unknown and enigmatic land. Only a handful of archaeologists have studied its history or unearthed the Nubian cities, temples, and cemeteries that once dotted the landscape of southern Egypt and northern Sudan. Nubia’s remote setting in the midst of an inhospitable desert, with access by river blocked by impassable rapids, has lent it not only an air of mystery, but also isolated it from exploration. Over the past century, particularly during this last generation, scholars have begun to focus more attention on the fascinating cultures of ancient Nubia, ironically prompted by the construction of large dams that have flooded vast tracts of the ancient land.

This book attempts to document some of what has recently been discovered about ancient Nubia, with its remarkable history, architecture, and culture, and thereby to give us a picture of this rich, but unfamiliar, African legacy.