The Egyptian Renaissance

The Egyptian Renaissance
Author: Brian Anthony Curran
Publisher:
Total Pages: 470
Release: 2007
Genre: Art
ISBN:

Fascination with ancient Egypt is a recurring theme in Western culture, and here Brian Curran uncovers its deep roots in the Italian Renaissance, which embraced not only classical art and literature but also a variety of other cultures that modern readers don't tend to associate with early modern Italy. Patrons, artists, and spectators of the period were particularly drawn, Curran shows, to Egyptian antiquity and its artifacts, many of which found their way to Italy in Roman times and exerted an influence every bit as powerful as that of their more familiar Greek and Roman counterparts. Curran vividly recreates this first wave of European Egyptomania with insightful interpretations of the period's artistic and literary works. In doing so, he paints a colorful picture of a time in which early moderns made the first efforts to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs, and popes and princes erected pyramids and other Egyptianate marvels to commemorate their own authority. Demonstrating that the emergence of ancient Egypt as a distinct category of historical knowledge was one of Renaissance humanism's great accomplishments, Curran's peerless study will be required reading for Renaissance scholars and anyone interested in the treasures and legacy of ancient Egypt.

American Hieroglyphics

American Hieroglyphics
Author: John T. Irwin
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM
Total Pages: 419
Release: 2016-10-02
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 142142116X

How the discovery of the Rosetta Stone led to new ways of thinking about language: “A brilliant new interpretation of major 19th-century American writers.” —J. Hillis Miller The discovery of the Rosetta Stone and the subsequent decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics captured the imaginations of nineteenth-century American writers and provided a focal point for their speculations on the relationships between sign, symbol, language, and meaning. Through fresh readings of classic works by Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville, John T. Irwin’s American Hieroglyphics examines the symbolic mode associated with the pictographs. Irwin demonstrates how American Symbolist literature of the period was motivated by what he calls “hieroglyphic doubling,” the use of pictographic expression as a medium of both expression and interpretation. Along the way, he touches upon a wide range of topics that fascinated people of the day, including the journey to the source of the Nile and ideas about the origin of language.

Handbook of Ancient Nubia

Handbook of Ancient Nubia
Author: Dietrich Raue
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 1133
Release: 2019-06-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 3110420384

Numerous research projects have studied the Nubian cultures of Sudan and Egypt over the last thirty years, leading to significant new insights. The contributions to this handbook illuminate our current understanding of the cultural history of this fascinating region, including its interconnections to the natural world.

Afterglow of Empire

Afterglow of Empire
Author: Aidan Dodson
Publisher: American University in Cairo Press
Total Pages: 349
Release: 2019-11-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1617979678

During the half-millennium from the eleventh through the sixth centuries BC, the power and the glory of the imperial pharaohs of the New Kingdom crumbled in the face of internal crises and external pressures, ultimately reversed by invaders from Nubia and consolidated by natives of the Nile Delta following a series of Assyrian invasions. Much of this era remains obscure, with little consensus among Egyptologists. Against this background, Aidan Dodson reconsiders the evidence and proposes a number of new solutions to the problems of the period. He also considers the era's art, architecture, and archaeology, including the royal tombs of Tanis, one of which yielded the intact burials of no fewer than five pharaohs. Afterglow of Empire is extensively illustrated with images of this material, much of which is little known to non-specialists. By the author of the bestselling Amarna Sunset and Poisoned Legacy.

The Oxford Handbook of Egyptian Epigraphy and Palaeography

The Oxford Handbook of Egyptian Epigraphy and Palaeography
Author: Vanessa Davies
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 721
Release: 2020-03-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 0190604654

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.

Wonderful Things

Wonderful Things
Author: Jason Thompson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 377
Release: 2015
Genre: Egypt
ISBN: 9774165993

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.

Towards a New History for the Egyptian Old Kingdom

Towards a New History for the Egyptian Old Kingdom
Author: Peter Der Manuelian
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 537
Release: 2015-10-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004301895

The Pyramid Age represents the first of several highpoints in ancient Egypt’s long history. But critical questions remain about the period, its social structure and economic organization, and the long-term implications of its artistic achievements. On the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the Journal of Egyptian History, The University of British Columbia, Harvard University, and Brill Academic Publishers, Boston, held a conference at Harvard University on April 26, 2012. A distinguished group of Egyptological scholars from around the world gathered to consider new perspectives on the Pyramid Age; the results are presented here.

The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia

The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia
Author: Geoff Emberling
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 1217
Release: 2020-12-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 0197521835

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.

Egyptomania

Egyptomania
Author: Ronald H. Fritze
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Total Pages: 446
Release: 2021-02-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1780236859

Egyptomania takes us on a historical journey to unearth the Egypt of the imagination, a land of strange gods, mysterious magic, secret knowledge, monumental pyramids, enigmatic sphinxes, and immense wealth. Egypt has always exerted a powerful attraction on the Western mind, and an array of figures have been drawn to the idea of Egypt. Even the practical-minded Napoleon dreamed of Egyptian glory and helped open the antique land to explorers. Ronald H. Fritze goes beyond art and architecture to reveal Egyptomania’s impact on religion, philosophy, historical study, literature, travel, science, and popular culture. All those who remain captivated by the ongoing phenomenon of Egyptomania will revel in the mysteries uncovered in this book.