Speak My Name

Speak My Name
Author: James Fraser
Publisher: Sydney University Press
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2022-11-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1743328486

“Speak my name so that I may live again” was often written on the walls of Egyptian tombs, imploring visitors to speak the names of the dead and make offerings on their behalf. These acts of continued remembrance sustained the dead in the afterlife. Speak My Name: Investigating Egyptian Mummies explores the coffins and mummies of Meruah, Padiashaikhet, Horus and Mer-Neith-it-es, who lived in Egypt between 1200 BCE and 100 CE and whose mummies and/or coffins are now in the Chau Chak Wing Museum at the University of Sydney. A multidisciplinary team provides new insights into mummification and coffin manufacture in ancient Egypt through a combination of scientific and Egyptological methods, including CT imaging, skeletal analysis, radiocarbon dating, and digital modelling and illustration. Their discoveries illuminate the personhood of the individuals these mummies and coffins represent. Advances in technology allow us to respectfully learn about their daily lives, including nutrition, health and disease. Beautifully illustrated, Speak My Name demonstrates how science and archaeology work together to help us better understand the past. By studying the life and death of Meruah, Padiashaikhet, Horus and Mer-Neith-it-es, we speak their names again.

The Art of Ancient Egypt

The Art of Ancient Egypt
Author: Gay Robins
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2008
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780674030657

An illustrated history of over 3,000 years of Egyptian artwork arranged chronologically from the early dynastic period to the Ptolemaic period.

Breaking Images

Breaking Images
Author: Gianluca Miniaci
Publisher: Oxbow Books
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2023-02-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1789259169

Archaeological remains are ‘fragmented by definition’: apart from exceptional cases, the study of the human past takes into account mainly traces, ruins, discards, and debris of past civilizations. It is rare that things have been preserved as they were originally made and conceived in the past. However, not all the ancient fragmentary objects were the ‘leftovers’ from the past. A noticeable portion of them was part and parcel of the ancient materiality already in the form of a fragment or damaged item. In 2000, John Chapman, with his volume Fragmentation in Archaeology, attracted the attention of scholars on the need to reconsider broken artifacts as the result of the deliberate anthropic process of physical fragmentation. The phenomenon of fragmentation can be thus explored with more outcomes for a category of objects that played an important role inside the society: the figurines. Due to their portability and size, figurines are particularly entangled and engaged in social, spatial, temporal, and material relations, and – more than other artifacts – can easily accommodate acts of embodiment and dismemberment. The act of creation symmetrically also involves the act of destruction, which in turn is another act of creation, since from the fragmentation comes a new entity with a different ontology. Breaking contains the paradigms of life: creation and reparation, destruction and regeneration. The scope of this volume is to search for traces of any voluntary and intentional fragmentation of ancient artifacts, creating, improving, and sharpening the methods and principles for a scientific investigation that goes beyond single author impression or sensitivity. The comparative lens adopted in this volume can allow the reader to explore different fields taken from ancient societies of how we can address, assess, detect, and even discuss the action of breaking and mutilation of ancient figurines.

Historical Dictionary of Ancient Egypt

Historical Dictionary of Ancient Egypt
Author: Morris L. Bierbrier
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
Total Pages: 489
Release: 2008-08-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 0810862506

The second edition of the Historical Dictionary of Ancient Egypt expands upon the information presented in the first with a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, a bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on Egyptian rulers, bureaucrats, and commoners whose records have survived, as well as ancient society, religion, and gods.

Akhenaten and the Origins of Monotheism

Akhenaten and the Origins of Monotheism
Author: James K. Hoffmeier
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2015-01-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0199792143

Pharaoh Akhenaten, who reigned for seventeen years in the fourteenth century B.C.E, is one of the most intriguing rulers of ancient Egypt. His odd appearance and his preoccupation with worshiping the sun disc Aten have stimulated academic discussion and controversy for more than a century. Despite the numerous books and articles about this enigmatic figure, many questions about Akhenaten and the Atenism religion remain unanswered. In Akhenaten and the Origins of Monotheism, James K. Hoffmeier argues that Akhenaten was not, as is often said, a radical advocating a new religion, but rather a primitivist: that is, one who reaches back to a golden age and emulates it. Akhenaten's inspiration was the Old Kingdom (2650-2400 B.C.E.), when the sun-god Re/Atum ruled as the unrivaled head of the Egyptian pantheon. Hoffmeier finds that Akhenaten was a genuine convert to the worship of Aten, the sole creator God, based on the Pharoah's own testimony of a theophany, a divine encounter that launched his monotheistic religious odyssey. The book also explores the Atenist religion's possible relationship to Israel's religion, offering a close comparison of the hymn to the Aten to Psalm 104, which has been identified by scholars as influenced by the Egyptian hymn. Through a careful reading of key texts, artworks, and archaeological studies, Hoffmeier provides compelling new insights into a religion that predated Moses and Hebrew monotheism, the impact of Atenism on Egyptian religion and politics, and the aftermath of Akhenaten's reign.

Ausgestattet mit den Schriften des Thot

Ausgestattet mit den Schriften des Thot
Author: Burkhard Backes
Publisher: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2009
Genre: History
ISBN: 9783447058766

Mit Irmtraut Munro geht Anfang 2009 eine der produktivsten Forscherinnen zum altagyptischen Totenbuch in den Ruhestand. In den vergangenen 15 Jahren erschien im Harrassowitz-Verlag ein Dutzend Monographien von ihr zu diesem Thema. Die Festschrift versammelt 17 Aufsatze befreundeter Wissenschaftler und Kollegen aus insgesamt 10 europaischen Landern. Dem Hauptinteresse der Jubilarin entsprechend bilden Publikationen und Studien zu einzelnen Textzeugen des Totenbuchs einen inhaltlichen Schwerpunkt des Buches. Weitere Beitrage befassen sich mit ihrer Ikonographie, Uberlieferungsgeschichte sowie ihrem Inhalt und ihren Vignetten. Einige Beitrage gehen uber den Bereich des Totenbuchs hinaus und nehmen Bezug auf weitere Texte wie das Mundoffnungsritual und die Pyramidentexte. Insgesamt behandelt das Buch ausgewahlte Fragen zum Totenbuch uber seinen gesamten Belegzeitraum vom Neuen Reich bis zur Ptolemaerzeit.

Unwrapping Ancient Egypt

Unwrapping Ancient Egypt
Author: Christina Riggs
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2014-04-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0857854984

First runner-up for the British-Kuwait Friendship Society Book Prize in Middle Eastern Studies 2015. In ancient Egypt, wrapping sacred objects, including mummified bodies, in layers of cloth was a ritual that lay at the core of Egyptian society. Yet in the modern world, attention has focused instead on unwrapping all the careful arrangements of linen textiles the Egyptians had put in place. This book breaks new ground by looking at the significance of textile wrappings in ancient Egypt, and at how their unwrapping has shaped the way we think about the Egyptian past. Wrapping mummified bodies and divine statues in linen reflected the cultural values attached to this textile, with implications for understanding gender, materiality and hierarchy in Egyptian society. Unwrapping mummies and statues similarly reflects the values attached to Egyptian antiquities in the West, where the colonial legacies of archaeology, Egyptology and racial science still influence how Egypt appears in museums and the press. From the tomb of Tutankhamun to the Arab Spring, Unwrapping Ancient Egypt raises critical questions about the deep-seated fascination with this culture – and what that fascination says about our own.

Mediterráneos

Mediterráneos
Author: Arturo Echavarren
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 550
Release: 2014-08-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 1443866423

Throughout history, different cultural traditions, all of them with considerable linguistic diversity, have flourished and converged in the Mediterranean and Near Eastern regions. The International Conference of Junior Researchers in Mediterranean and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures provided a transverse and interdisciplinary framework of discussion and reflection on the intellectual and cultural production of the Mediterranean and the Near East, from its earliest stages to the present. This book is the result of the analysis of the different political, religious and social trends of thought, material culture, and artistic, literary and linguistic expressions brought together in this geographical area, highlighting the scope of this blend of traditions within different space-time surroundings.