The richest, most powerful woman in the world, Cleopatra ruled the East and tamed the West. With both cunning and charm, she beguiled two of the most famous men in history, entwining Egypt’s destiny with Rome’s. Many believed she was as sly as a serpent. Or was she just smart? Gorgeous illustrations and an intelligent, evocative story bring to life a real dastardly dame who, despite her schemes, lost everything—including her beloved homeland.
After a year, central Africa has finally started to feel like home to Anne, a human-rights activist from California. Deeply committed to helping the strife-torn nation of Burundi during its first democratic elections, Anne has also begun an intoxicating affair with Jean-Pierre, a government official allied with the Tutsi ruling class. But when the election brings the rival Hutus to power, violence breaks out, leaving thousands of people dead, and laying bare disturbing secrets about Anne's lover and his family. She reluctantly returns to California, only to discover troubling secrets in her own family. As she struggles with the moral implications of all she has learned, Anne must reconcile complex conflicting claims of duty and love. The True Sources of the Nile unfolds like a passionately felt love affair that initially obscures the world around it, then comes to brilliantly illuminate it.
Arabia and the Middle East have an unusually rich herpetofauna, and this is exemplified by the region's snakes. There are almost 190 species, and this new field guide offers a way to identify them. Written by expert Damien Egan and illustrated with his brilliant digital imagery, the book consists of 87 plates, each containing two or three species, with the snakes illustrated along with comparison species and diagnostic features in detail, such as head and keel scales. A concise species text accompanies each plate, highlighting ID, ecology, habitat and prey, along with notes on venom. Introductory text covers the snakes of the region more widely, with a discussion on how and where to find them and how to study them safely. Ambitious in scope, this book will be of great interest to all herpetophiles living in or visiting this broad and diverse region.
This book is about snakebite and snake identification in ancient Egypt. The authors--in a remarkable collaboration between the fields of Egyptology, medicine, herpetology, biology, and ecology--offer a new examination of the Brooklyn Medical Papyrus, better-known as the Snakebite Papyrus, a pragmatic medical treatise concerned with snake identification, snakebite, and treatment. Dating to sometime in the seventh through fourth centuries BCE, the document is the first-known structured treatise on snakebites from antiquity. The preserved paragraphs name 24 snakes (and one chameleon), providing a brief description of the snake, sometimes its habits, the appearance of its bite, and the effects on the victim. The papyrus was intended to enable the ancient physician to identify the snake from the description given by the patient in order to give appropriate prognosis and treatment. As there was little effective treatment for snake bites in ancient Egypt, sometimes the physician resorted to magical incantations to invoke divine assistance. The Snakebite Papyrus was first translated into French by Serge Sauneron and published posthumously in 1989. Major advances in fields such as biogeography, climate and niche modeling, and linguistics in the past thirty years have brought new perspectives. The authors provide a review of Sauneron's and more recent studies and bring their own investigations, results, and comparisons to further clarify this remarkable historical document.
In the Aftermath of Genocide: The U.S. Role in Rwanda deepens understanding of the violence--the Rwandan genocide and the Congolese war--that engulfed Central Africa in the midnineties, and America's policy response to the crises. Author Robert E. Gribbin draws on his thirty years of diplomatic experience in the region to analyze U.S. perceptions of Rwanda in the years before the genocide and to recount the unfolding of the terrible event itself. Most important, he describes what happened afterwards--how the new government and people of Rwanda, together with their international partners, confronted devastation, picked up the pieces, and began to forge a new nation. They had to reestablish viable government, deliver justice to those guilty of genocide, repatriate over a million refugees, and confront an insurgency at home and a war in the Congo. In the Aftermath of Genocide is an insider's account of these crucial events. It recounts what the U.S. government knew, or did not know, and what it did, or did not do, about them.
The waters of the Nile are fundamental to life in Egypt. In this compelling ethnography, Jessica Barnes explores the everyday politics of water: a politics anchored in the mundane yet vital acts of blocking, releasing, channeling, and diverting water. She examines the quotidian practices of farmers, government engineers, and international donors as they interact with the waters of the Nile flowing into and through Egypt. Situating these local practices in relation to broader processes that affect Nile waters, Barnes moves back and forth from farmer to government ministry, from irrigation canal to international water conference. By showing how the waters of the Nile are constantly made and remade as a resource by people in and outside Egypt, she demonstrates the range of political dynamics, social relations, and technological interventions that must be incorporated into understandings of water and its management.
The alien influences behind the rise and fall of Egypt’s Golden Age • Explains how Akhenaten was the last pharaoh entrusted with the sacred and ancient alien knowledge of stargates, free energy, and antigravity technologies • Reveals how the Brotherhood of the Snake, a secret society of reptilian aliens, sought to destroy Akhenaten and suppress the sacred knowledge of the pharaohs • Explores the original purpose of the pyramids--to transmit energy to expand consciousness--and how they were decommissioned after the Great Flood The sophisticated civilization of ancient Egypt arose seemingly overnight, complete with advanced levels of art, agriculture, astronomy, and physics. Then, with the death of Pharaoh Akhenaten, much of this higher knowledge was lost--or suppressed. But evidence of this former Golden Age, the alien visitors behind its rise, and those behind its decline still exists--some of it in plain sight. Examining the purposefully obscured reign of Akhenaten and Nefertiti, Xaviant Haze explains how they represent the last dynasty with access to the sacred knowledge of stargates, free energy, and antigravity technologies, knowledge handed down from an advanced interstellar race in the remote past. He reveals how the reptilian race known as the Shemsu Hor infiltrated the Egyptian priesthood and banking systems and formed the Brotherhood of the Snake--a secret society set on destroying Akhenaten’s flourishing kingdom and suppressing the sacred knowledge of the pharaohs. Haze examines the evidence of aliens in ancient Egypt, such as the reptilian beings depicted in the Temple of Hathor and Thutmose III’s alien encounter. He shows how Akhenaten and his family are always portrayed with elongated skulls and explores the connection between ancient aliens and Mars, including the Martian materials used in Egyptian monuments. He explains the original purpose of the pyramids--to transmit uplifting energy throughout the planet to help expand consciousness--and explores how they were decommissioned after the Great Flood of prehistory. He reveals how the original builders of the pyramids foresaw humanity’s fall from the Golden Age and strategically encoded these magnificent structures to wake humanity from the depths of the Dark Ages.
Deep in the vastness of a lost corner of the Congo a reformed big game hunter tackles the management of Garamba National Park. He must wend his way through modern African bureaucracies, civil strife, and corruption in order to combat elephant poachers and remnants of the Lord’s Resistance Army, all the while in search of the possibility that northern white rhino may still exist. The saga unfolds as the hunter and his team of rangers strive to protect and resurrect the park from the ravages of neglect and war. Mysteries of tribal tradition and the very existence of vanishing species unfold along with heartwarming relationships of folks caught up in efforts to save wild creatures. Accurately set amidst the woes of contemporary Congo, the story educates and enlightens about the challenges of conservation in the troubled heart of Africa.
The Horned Viperis the second in a new series of four books set in ancient Egypt. Each book is a well researched and atmospheric evocation of Egyptian life encased in an exciting adventure story. The boy and girl characters, Hopi and Isis, feature in each book and readers will be intrigued to follow their struggles for existence and adventure in Egypt circa 1150 BC. In this story, The Horned Viper, Hopi and Isis, orphaned when crocodiles kill their parents, travel along the River Nile and pit their wits against dangerous enemies. Can they solve the web of intrigue before their boat journey ends? Especially as the powerful Nubian fan-bearer has chosen Hopi as his particular enemy . . .
While her father is in hiding after attempts on his life, 12-year-old Cleopatra records in her diary how she fears for her own safety and hopes to survive to become Queen of Egypt some day.
