The essays in this Oxford Handbook rethink the modern history of one of the most important and influential countries in the Middle East--Egypt. For a country and region so often understood in terms of religion and violence, this work explores environmental, medical, legal, cultural, and political histories. It gives readers an excellent view of the current debates in Egyptian history.
The Oxford Handbook of Egyptology offers a comprehensive survey of the entire study of ancient Egypt from prehistory through to the end of the Roman period. It seeks to place Egyptology within its theoretical, methodological, and historical contexts, indicating how the subject has evolved and discussing its distinctive contemporary problems, issues, and potential. Transcending conventional boundaries between archaeological and ancient textual analysis, the volume brings together 63 chapters that range widely across archaeological, philological, and cultural sub-disciplines, highlighting the extent to which Egyptology as a subject has diversified and stressing the need for it to seek multidisciplinary methods and broader collaborations if it is to remain contemporary and relevant. Organized into ten parts, it offers a comprehensive synthesis of the various sub-topics and specializations that make up the field as a whole, from the historical and geographical perspectives that have influenced its development and current characteristics, to aspects of museology and conservation, and from materials and technology - as evidenced in domestic architecture and religious and funerary items - to textual and iconographic approaches to Egyptian culture. Authoritative yet accessible, it serves not only as an invaluable reference work for scholars and students working within the discipline, but also as a gateway into Egyptology for classicists, archaeologists, anthropologists, sociologists, and linguists.
The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt is the only book available providing detailed historical coverage of Egypt from the early Stone Age to its incorporation into the Roman Empire. The lively essays and beautiful illustrations portray the emergence and development of the distinctive civilization of the ancient Egyptians covering the period from 700,000 BC to ad 311. The authors - each working at the cutting edge of their particular fields - outline the principal sequence of political events, including detailed examinations of the three so-called Intermediate Periods previously regarded as 'dark ages'. Against the backdrop of the rise and fall of ruling dynasties, this Oxford History also examines cultural and social patterns, including stylistic developments in art and literature. The pace of change in such aspects of Egyptian culture as monumental architecture, funerary beliefs, and ethnicity was not necessarily tied to the rate of political change. Each of the authors has therefore set out to elucidate, in both words and pictures, the underlying patterns of social and political change, and to describe the changing face of ancient Egypt, from the biographical details of individuals to the social and economic factors that shaped the lives of the population as a whole.
The unique relationship between word and image in ancient Egypt is a defining feature of that ancient culture's records. All hieroglyphic texts are composed of images, and large-scale figural imagery in temples and tombs is often accompanied by texts. Epigraphy and palaeography are two distinct, but closely related, ways of recording, analyzing, and interpreting texts and images. This Handbook stresses technical issues about recording text and art and interpretive questions about what we do with those records and why we do it. It offers readers three key things: a diachronic perspective, covering all ancient Egyptian scripts from prehistoric Egypt through the Coptic era (fourth millennium BCE-first half of first millennium CE), a look at recording techniques that considers the past, present, and future, and a focus on the experiences of colleagues. The diachronic perspective illustrates the range of techniques used to record different phases of writing in different media. The consideration of past, present, and future techniques allows readers to understand and assess why epigraphy and palaeography is or was done in a particular manner by linking the aims of a particular effort with the technique chosen to reach those aims. The choice of techniques is a matter of goals and the records' work circumstances, an inevitable consequence of epigraphy being a double projection: geometrical, transcribing in two dimensions an object that exists physically in three; and mental, an interpretation, with an inevitable selection among the object's defining characteristics. The experiences of colleagues provide a range of perspectives and opinions about issues such as techniques of recording, challenges faced in the field, and ways of reading and interpreting text and image. These accounts are interesting and instructive stories of innovation in the face of scientific conundrum.
The royal necropolis of New Kingdom Egypt, known as the Valley of the Kings (KV), is one of the most important--and celebrated--archaeological sites in the world. Located on the west bank of the Nile river, about three miles west of modern Luxor, the valley is home to more than sixty tombs, all dating to the second millennium BCE. The most famous of these is the tomb of Tutankhamun, first discovered by Howard Carter in 1922. Other famous pharaoh's interred here include Hatshepsut, the only queen found in the valley, and Ramesses II, ancient Egypt's greatest ruler. Much has transpired in the study and exploration of the Valley of the Kings over the last few years. Several major discoveries have been made, notably the many-chambered KV5 (tomb of the sons of Ramesses II) and KV 63, a previously unknown tomb found in the heart of the valley. Many areas of the royal valley have been explored for the first time using new technologies, revealing ancient huts, shrines, and stelae. New studies of the DNA, filiation, cranio-facial reconstructions, and other aspects of the royal mummies have produced important and sometimes controversial results. The Oxford Handbook of the Valley of the Kings provides an up-to-date and thorough reference designed to fill a very real gap in the literature of Egyptology. It will be an invaluable resource for scholars, teachers, and researchers with an interest in this key area of Egyptian archaeology. First, introductory chapters locate the Valley of the Kings in space and time. Subsequent chapters offer focused examinations of individual tombs: their construction, content, development, and significance. Finally, the book discusses the current status of ongoing issues of preservation and archaeology, such as conservation, tourism, and site management. In addition to recent work mentioned above, aerial imaging, remote sensing, studies of the tombs' architectural and decorative symbolism, problems of conservation management, and studies of KV-related temples are just some of the aspects not covered in any other work on the Valley of the Kings. This volume promises to become the primary scholarly reference work on this important World Heritage Site.
The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Middle-Eastern and North African History critically examines the defining processes and structures of historical developments in North Africa and the Middle East over the past two centuries. The Handbook pays particular attention to countries that have leapt out of the political shadows of dominant and better-studied neighbours in the course of the unfolding uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa. These dramatic and interconnected developments have exposed the dearth of informative analysis available in surveys and textbooks, particularly on Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and Syria.
With almost every news broadcast, we are reminded of the continuing instability of the Middle East, where state collapse, civil wars, and terrorism have combined to produce a region in turmoil. If the Middle East is to achieve a more stable and prosperous future, Egypt-which possesses the region's largest population, a formidable military, and considerable soft power-must play a central role. Modern Egypt: What Everyone Needs to Know® by Bruce Rutherford and Jeannie Sowers introduces readers to this influential country. The book begins with the 2011-2012 uprising that captured the world's attention before turning to an overview of modern Egyptian history. The book then focuses on present-day Egyptian politics, society, demography, culture, and religion. It analyzes Egypt's core problems, including deepening authoritarianism, high unemployment, widespread poverty, rapid population growth, and pollution. The book then concentrates on Egypt's relations with the United States, Israel, Arab states, and other world powers. Modern Egypt concludes by assessing the country's ongoing challenges and suggesting strategies for addressing them. Concise yet sweeping in coverage, the book provides the essential background for understanding this fascinating country and its potential to shape the future of the Middle East.
The cultures of Nubia built the earliest cities, states, and empires of inner Africa, but they remain relatively poorly known outside their modern descendants and the community of archaeologists, historians, and art historians researching them. The earliest archaeological work in Nubia was motivated by the region's role as neighbor, trade partner, and enemy of ancient Egypt. Increasingly, however, ancient Nile-based Nubian cultures are recognized in their own right as the earliest complex societies in inner Africa. As agro-pastoral cultures, Nubian settlement, economy, political organization, and religious ideologies were often organized differently from those of the urban, bureaucratic, and predominantly agricultural states of Egypt and the ancient Near East. Nubian societies are thus of great interest in comparative study, and are also recognized for their broader impact on the histories of the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East. The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia brings together chapters by an international group of scholars on a wide variety of topics that relate to the history and archaeology of the region. After important introductory chapters on the history of research in Nubia and on its climate and physical environment, the largest part of the volume focuses on the sequence of cultures that lead almost to the present day. Several cross-cutting themes are woven through these chapters, including essays on desert cultures and on Nubians in Egypt. Eleven final chapters synthesize subjects across all historical phases, including gender and the body, economy and trade, landscape archaeology, iron working, and stone quarrying.
Roman Egypt is a critical area of interdisciplinary research, which has steadily expanded since the 1970s and continues to grow. Egypt played a pivotal role in the Roman empire, not only in terms of political, economic, and military strategies, but also as part of an intricate cultural discourse involving themes that resonate today - east and west, old world and new, acculturation and shifting identities, patterns of language use and religious belief, and the management of agriculture and trade. Roman Egypt was a literal and figurative crossroads shaped by the movement of people, goods, and ideas, and framed by permeable boundaries of self and space. This handbook is unique in drawing together many different strands of research on Roman Egypt, in order to suggest both the state of knowledge in the field and the possibilities for collaborative, synthetic, and interpretive research. Arranged in seven thematic sections, each of which includes essays from a variety of disciplinary vantage points and multiple sources of information, it offers new perspectives from both established and younger scholars, featuring individual essay topics, themes, and intellectual juxtapositions.
