The Middle Kingdom (ca. 2030–1650 B.C.) was a transformational period in ancient Egypt, during which older artistic conventions, cultural principles, religious beliefs, and political systems were revived and reimagined. Ancient Egypt Transformed presents a comprehensive picture of the art of the Middle Kingdom, arguably the least known of Egypt’s three kingdoms and yet one that saw the creation of powerful, compelling works rendered with great subtlety and sensitivity. The book brings together nearly 300 diverse works— including sculpture, relief decoration, stelae, jewelry, coffins, funerary objects, and personal possessions from the world’s leading collections of Egyptian art. Essays on architecture, statuary, tomb and temple relief decoration, and stele explore how Middle Kingdom artists adapted forms and iconography of the Old Kingdom, using existing conventions to create strikingly original works. Twelve lavishly illustrated chapters, each with a scholarly essay and entries on related objects, begin with discussions of the distinctive art that arose in the south during the early Middle Kingdom, the artistic developments that followed the return to Egypt’s traditional capital in the north, and the renewed construction of pyramid complexes. Thematic chapters devoted to the pharaoh, royal women, the court, and the vital role of family explore art created for different strata of Egyptian society, while others provide insight into Egypt’s expanding relations with foreign lands and the themes of Middle Kingdom literature. The era’s religious beliefs and practices, such as the pilgrimage to Abydos, are revealed through magnificent objects created for tombs, chapels, and temples. Finally, the book discusses Middle Kingdom archaeological sites, including excavations undertaken by the Metropolitan Museum over a number of decades. Written by an international team of respected Egyptologists and Middle Kingdom specialists, the text provides recent scholarship and fresh insights, making the book an authoritative resource.

Amyrtaeus, only pharaoh of the Twenty-eighth Dynasty, shook off the shackles of Persian rule in 404 BCE; a little over seventy years later, Ptolemy son of Lagus started the ‘Greek millennium’ (J.G. Manning’s phrase) in Egypt―living long enough to leave a powerful kingdom to his youngest son, Ptolemy II, in 282. In this book, expert studies document the transformation of Egypt through the dynamic fourth century, and the inauguration of the Ptolemaic state. Ptolemy built up his position as ruler subtly and steadily. Continuity and change marked the Egyptian-Greek encounter. The calendar, the economy and coinage, the temples, all took on new directions. In the great new city of Alexandria, the settlers’ burial customs had their own story to tell.

In 30 BCE, Egypt became a province of the Roman empire. Alongside unbroken traditions—especially of the indigenous Egyptian population, but also among the Greek elite—major changes and slow processes of transformation can be observed. The multi-ethnical population was situated between new patterns of rule and traditional lifeways. This tension between change and permanence was investigated during the conference. The last decades have seen an increase in the interest in Roman Egypt with new research from different disciplines—Egyptology, Ancient History, Classical Archaeology, Epigraphy, and Papyrology—providing new insights into the written and archaeological sources, especially into settlement archaeology. Well-known scholars analysed the Egyptian temples, the structure and development of the administration beside archaeological, papyrological, art-historical and cult related questions.

Egyptian roots of Christianity, both historically and spiritually. This book reveals the Ancient Egyptian roots of Christianity, both historically and spiritually. This Expanded Version of the book consists of three parts to coincide with the terms of trinity. The first part demonstrates that the major biblical ancestors of the biblical Jesus are all Ancient Egyptian prominent characters. The second part demonstrates that the accounts of the “historical Jesus” are based entirely on the life and death of the Egyptian Pharaoh, Twt/Tut-Ankh-Amen. The third part demonstrates that the “Jesus of Faith” and the Christian tenets are all Egyptian in origin—such as the essence of the teachings/message, the creation of the universe and man (according to the Book of Genesis), as well as the religious holidays. The very thing that is now called the Christian religion was already in existence in Ancient Egypt, long before the adoption of the New Testament. The British Egyptologist, Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, wrote in his book, The Gods of the Egyptians [1969], The new religion (Christianity) which was preached there by St. Mark and his immediate followers, in all essentials so closely resembled that which was the outcome of the worship of Osiris, Isis, and Horus. The similarities, noted by Budge and everyone who has compared the Egyptian Osiris/Isis/ Horus allegory to the Gospel story, are striking. Both accounts are practically the same, e.g. the supernatural conception, the divine birth, the struggles against the enemy in the wilderness, and the resurrection from the dead to eternal life. The main difference between the “two versions”, is that the Gospel tale is considered historical and the Osiris/Isis/Horus cycle is an allegory. The spiritual message of the Ancient Egyptian Osiris/Isis/Horus allegory and the Christian revelation is exactly the same. The British scholar A.N. Wilson pointed out in his book, Jesus: The Jesus of History and the Christ of Faith are two separate beings, with very different stories. It is difficult enough to reconstruct the first, and in the attempt we are likely to do irreparable harm to the second. This book will demonstrate that the “Jesus of History”, the ”Jesus of Faith”, and the tenets of Christianity are all Ancient Egyptian. This will be done without causing any “irreparable harm” as per A.N. Wilson’s concern, for two main reasons: Firstly, the truth must be told. Secondly, explaining Christian tenets via their original Ancient Egyptian contexts will enhance the idealism of Christianity. This Expanded Version of the book consists of three parts to coincide with the terms of trinity—the Three that are Two that are One. The first part demonstrates that the major biblical ancestors of the biblical Jesus are all Ancient Egyptian prominent individuals. The second part demonstrates that the accounts of the “historical Jesus” are based entirely on the life and death of the Egyptian Pharaoh, Twt/Tut- Ankh-Amen. The third part demonstrates that the “Jesus of Faith” and the Christian tenets are all Egyptian in origin—such as the essence of the teachings/message, the creation of the universe and man (according to the Book of Genesis), as well as the religious holidays. There is an undeniable irony and a profound, deep, undeniable truth in Hosea’s prophetic saying, Out of Egypt have I called my Son. A deep irony indeed. Let us open our minds and review the available evidence. For the truth is a composite of different and complementary pieces of a puzzle. Let us put the pieces in the right location, time and order.

The belief that dead people could assume non-human forms is attested in Egyptian texts of all periods, from the Old Kingdom down to Graeco-Roman times. It was thought that assuming such forms enhanced their freedom of movement and access to nourishment in the afterlife, as well as allowing them to join the entourages of different deities and participate in their worship. Spells referring to or enabling the deceased’s transformations occur in the Pyramid Texts, the Coffin Texts, and the Book of the Dead. But it is not until the Graeco-Roman Period that we find entire compositions devoted to this theme. Two of the most important are P. Louvre N. 3122 and P. Berlin P. 3162, both written in hieratic and dating to the 1st century AD. Both texts have been known to Egyptologists for more than a century, but neither is currently available in an up-to-date comprehensive edition. This book provides such an edition, including high-resolution images of the manuscripts, hieroglyphic transcriptions, translations, descriptions of their material aspects, studies of their owners, their titles, and their families, reconstructions of their context of usage, analyses of their orthography and grammar, and detailed commentaries on their contents.

Basic education has headed the agendas of development agencies in recent years. During this period, Egypt topped the recipients lists of development assistance and proclaimed education to be its national project. This study explains how the Egyptian political actors interacted with and reacted to the development aid to Egypt's educational system.

This groundbreaking, five-volume series offers a comprehensive, fully illustrated history of Egypt and Western Asia (the Levant, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and Iran), from the emergence of complex states to the conquest of Alexander the Great. Written by a diverse, international team of leading scholars whose expertise brings to life the people, places, and times of the remote past, the volumes in this series focus firmly on the political and social histories of the states and communities of the ancient Near East. Individual chapters present the key textual and material sources underpinning the historical reconstruction, paying particular attention to the most recent archaeological finds and their impact on our historical understanding of the periods surveyed. The second volume covers broadly the first half of the second millennium BC or in archaeological terms, the Middle Bronze Age. Eleven chapters present the history of the Near East, beginning with the First Intermediate Period and Middle Kingdom Egypt and the Mesopotamian kingdoms of Ur (Third Dynasty), Isin and Larsa. The complex mosaic of competing states that arose between the Eastern Mediterranean, the Anatolian highlands and the Zagros mountains of Iran are all treated, culminating in an examination of the kingdom of Babylon founded by Hammurabi and maintained by his successors. Beyond the narrative history of each region considered, the volume treats a wide range of critical topics, including the absolute chronology; state formation and disintegration; the role of kingship, cult practice and material culture in the creation and maintenance of social hierarchies; and long-distance trade-both terrestrial and maritime-as a vital factor in the creation of social, political and economic networks that bridged deserts, oceans, and mountain ranges, binding together the extraordinarily diverse peoples and polities of Sub-Saharan Africa, the Near East, and Central Asia.

In 1895–96, William Matthew Flinders Petrie and James Edward Quibell discovered a shaft-tomb below the ‘Ramesseum’, the funerary temple of Ramses II at Thebes, Egypt. This is most famous for having the largest group of Middle Kingdom papyri – also known as the Ramesseum Papyri – found in a single spot together with a number of distinctive objects, such as carved ivory tusks and miniature figurines in various materials dated around XVIII century BC. Gianluca Miniaci attempts to thoroughly reconstruct the archaeological context of the tomb: the exact find spot (forgotten afterwards its discovery), its architecture, the identity of its owner(s) and recipient(s) of the assemblage of artifacts. A detailed analysis of the single artifacts – provided for the first with full color photographic records and drawings – and their network of relations gives new life to the Ramesseum assemblage after more than a century from its discovery.

This is a story studded with extraordinary achievements and historic moments, from the building of the pyramids and the conquest of Nubia, through Akhenaten's religious revolution, the power and beauty of Nefertiti, the glory of Tutankhamun's burial chamber, and the ruthlessness of Ramesses, to Alexander the Great's invasion, and Cleopatra's fatal entanglement with Rome. As the world's first nation-state, the history of Ancient Egypt is above all the story of the attempt to unite a disparate realm and defend it against hostile forces from within and without. Combining grand narrative sweep with detailed knowledge of hieroglyphs and the iconography of power, Toby Wilkinson reveals Ancient Egypt in all its complexity.

This volume explores the significance of literacy for everyday life in the ancient world. It focuses on the use of writing and written materials, the circumstances of their use, and different types of users. The broad geographic and chronologic frame of reference includes many kinds of written materials, from Pharaonic Egypt and ancient China through the early middle ages, yet a focus is placed on the Roman Empire.