Merely to inhabit a desert demands much skill, craft, experience and travel. For the numerous nomadic tribes of Africa and the Middle East, living ancestors of the Egyptians, Jews and Arabs, Egypt is their meeting ground. The author, with twenty-five years of accumulated knowledge, here sets out to present analyses of their cultures and beliefs, along with descriptions of each tribe. First published 1935.
Merely to inhabit a desert demands much skill, craft, experience and travel. For the numerous nomadic tribes of Africa and the Middle East, living ancestors of the Egyptians, Jews and Arabs, Egypt is their meeting ground. The author, with twenty-five years of accumulated knowledge, here sets out to present analyses of their cultures and beliefs, along with descriptions of each tribe. First published 1935.
Desert Borderland investigates the historical processes that transformed political identity in the easternmost reaches of the Sahara Desert in the half century before World War I. Adopting a view from the margins—illuminating the little-known history of the Egyptian–Libyan borderland—the book challenges prevailing notions of how Egypt and Libya were constituted as modern territorial nation-states. Matthew H. Ellis draws on a wide array of archival sources to reconstruct the multiple layers and meanings of territoriality in this desert borderland. Throughout the decades, a heightened awareness of the existence of distinctive Egyptian and Ottoman Libyan territorial spheres began to develop despite any clear-cut boundary markers or cartographic evidence. National territoriality was not simply imposed on Egypt's western—or Ottoman Libya's eastern—domains by centralizing state power. Rather, it developed only through a complex and multilayered process of negotiation with local groups motivated by their own local conceptions of space, sovereignty, and political belonging. By the early twentieth century, distinctive "Egyptian" and "Libyan" territorial domains emerged—what would ultimately become the modern nation-states of Egypt and Libya.
This book explores the references to Egypt in the Pentateuch--twice as dense as in the rest of the Hebrew Bible--in the context of the production of the text's final form during the Persian period. Here, as Greifenhagen shows, Egypt functions ideologically as the primary "other" over against which Israel's identity is constructed, while its role in Israel's formation appears as subsidiary and as a superseded stage in a master narrative which locates Israel's ethnic roots in Mesopotamia. But the presentation of this powerful neighbour is equivocal: a dominant anti-Egyptian stance coexists with alternative, though subordinate, pro-Egyptian views, suggesting that the Pentateuchal narrative was produced within a context of ideological conflict over attitudes towards a land that provided a home for Jewish fugitives and emigrants.
“In this epic examination, [a] celebrated historian explores the evolution of Judaism and Islam through a lens of Middle Eastern stability.” (Publishers Weekly) The relationship between Jews and Muslims has been a flashpoint that affects stability in the Middle East with global consequences. In this eloquent book, Martin Gilbert presents a fascinating account of the hope and fear that have characterized these two peoples through the 1,400 years of their intertwined history. Harking back to the Biblical story of Ishmael and Isaac, Gilbert takes the reader from the origins of the fraught relationship—the refusal of Medina’s Jews to accept Mohammed as a prophet—through the ages of the Crusader reconquest of the Holy Land and the great Muslim sultanates to the present day. He explores the impact of Zionism in the early twentieth century, the clash of nationalisms during the Second World War, the mass expulsions and exodus of 800,000 Jews from Muslim lands following the birth of Israel, the Six-Day War, and the political sensitivities of the current Middle East. Ishmael’s House sheds light on a time of prosperity and opportunity for Jews in Muslim lands stretching from Morocco to Afghanistan, with many instances of Muslim openness, support, and courage. Drawing on Jewish, Christian, and Muslim sources, Gilbert uses archived material, poems, letters, memoirs, and personal testimony to uncover the human voice of this centuries-old conflict. Ultimately Gilbert’s moving account of mutual tolerance between Muslims and Jews provides a perspective on current events and a template for the future. “A reliable source and a pleasure to read.” —Herman Wouk, Pulitzer prize winning author of The Caine Mutiny “Moving and important.” —The Independent
He Will Rule as God unveils the political history of ancient Israel. The publication is an in-depth examination, but also an unbiased and objective commentary on the first fourteen books of the Old Testament.
A reinterpretation of Egyptian and biblical history that shows the Patriarch Joseph and Yuya, a vizier of the eighteenth dynasty king Tuthmosis IV, to be the same person • Uses detailed evidence from Egyptian, biblical, and Koranic sources to place Exodus in the time of Ramses I • Sheds new light on the mysterious and sudden rise of monotheism under Yuya’s daughter, Queen Tiye, and her son Akhnaten When Joseph revealed his identity to his kinsmen who had sold him into slavery, he told them that God had made him “a father to Pharaoh.” Throughout the long history of ancient Egypt, only one man is known to have been given the title “a father to Pharaoh”--Yuya, a vizier of the eighteenth dynasty king Tuthmosis IV. Yuya has long intrigued Egyptologists because he was buried in the Valley of Kings even though he was not a member of the Royal House. His extraordinarily well-preserved mummy has a strong Semitic appearance, which suggests he was not of Egyptian blood, and many aspects of his burial have been shown to be contrary to Egyptian custom. As The Hebrew Pharohs of Egypt shows, the idea that Joseph and Yuya may be one and the same person sheds a whole new light on the sudden rise of monotheism in Egypt, spearheaded by Queen Tiye and her son Akhnaten. It would clearly explain the deliberate obliteration of references to the “heretic” king and his successors by the last eighteenth dynasty pharaoh, Horemheb, whom the author believes was the oppressor king in the Book of Exodus. The author also draws on a wealth of detailed evidence from Egyptian, biblical, and Koranic sources to place the time of the departure of the Hebrews from Egypt during the short reign of Ramses I, the first king of the nineteenth dynasty.
Most of us begins to read the bible trying to understand our creator God and find out the way to escape from this troublesome world while struggling to cope with this fast running modern society and survive. But, reading through the bible alone would take a year, and yet finding out what it says is still another story. So, many of us close the bible before flipping over several pages and come back to wandering again for the same reason of enormous amount of scriptures and the difficulty to understand. Simply, we are trapped in this busy world of devil and the devil does not allow us to think about where we come from, where we go to and why we live in this world. That was stated in the bible as dead, saying 'And another of his disciples said unto him, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead. (Matthew8-22)' As the result, we just go to church for self-relief and follow the instructions of the church for no reason and say we obey to God. Yet, still we do not know what God says. Leaving every teaching of religious people and traditional religious idea behind, I tried to hear from God directly through the bible based upon solid rock foundation of common sense that the truth never changes. I did not hesitate to go to the extreme to stand on that foundation and I believe that extreme faith gave me understanding divine only God who is in extreme high place. As the bible says, 'No one can come to Me, unless the Father who sent Me draws him: and I will raise him up on the last day. (John 6-44)', this book is not intended to draw people into belief but to guide God's people that are lost. In other words, it is only for Sons of God. It doesn't necessarily mean that my way is the best way. So anybody who knows the way should follow own way.
