Archaeology and Ancient Egypt

During the half-millennium from the eleventh through the sixth century 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.

Transporting the Luxor obelisk from Egypt to Paris was one of the great engineering triumphs of the early nineteenth century. No obelisk this size (two hundred and fifty tons) had left Egypt in nearly two thousand years, and the task of bringing it fell to a young engineer, Apollinaire Lebas, a man of extraordinary resolve and ability. His is a tale of adventure, excitement, and drama, but one hardly known to the English-speaking world.

Lebas’ team was struck by the plague; they ran out of wood; they had to wait four months for the Nile to rise to free their beached ship.  But in the end, The Luxor, with its precious cargo on board, sailed down the Nile. On October 25, 1836 before two hundred thousand cheering Parisians, Lebas raised his obelisk. He was rewarded handsomely by his king, a medal with his name on it was struck, and his body lies in the famous Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris along with French luminaries. Now this first-ever translation of Lebas’ account, including digitally enhanced copies of his beautiful drawings, makes his remarkable story available to a wide audience.

Egypt has a particular longue durée, a continuity of preservation in deep time, not seen in other parts of the world. Over the centuries, ancient buildings have been adopted for purposes that differed from the original. Temple sites have been transformed into places of worship for new deities or turned into houses and tombs. Tombs, in turn, have been adapted to function as human dwellings already in the Late Antique Period.

The Afterlives of Egyptian History expands on the traditional academic approach of studying the original function and sociopolitical circumstances of ancient Egyptian objects, texts, and sites to examine their secondary lives by exploring their reuse, modification, and reinterpretation.

Written in honor of the Egyptologist, Edward Bleiberg, this volume brings together a group of luminous scholars from a wide range of fields, including Egyptian archaeology, philology, conservation, and art, to explore the historical circumstances, as well as political and economic situations, of people who have come into contact with ancient Egypt, both in antiquity and in more recent times.

To read an excerpt, click here. 

For the Table of Contents, click here.

A richly illustrated account of the rulers of the first three dynasties of the ancient Egyptian civilization, written by renowned Egyptologist Aidan Dodson

The five centuries that followed the unification of Egypt around 3100 BC—the first three dynasties—were crucial in the evolution of the Egyptian state. During this time all the key elements of the civilization that would endure for three millennia were put in place, centered on the semidivine king himself. The First Pharaohs: Their Lives and Afterlives looks at what we know about the two-dozen kings (and one queen-regent) who ruled Egypt during this formative era, from the scanty evidence for the events of their reigns, through to their surviving monuments. It also considers how they were remembered under their successors, when some of the earliest kings’ names were attributed to allegedly ancient ideas and events, and the ways in which some of their monuments became tourist attractions or were even wholly repurposed.

Aidan Dodson recounts how two centuries of modern scholarship have allowed these rulers to emerge from an oblivion so total that some archaeologists had come to doubt their very existence outside the works of ancient chroniclers. Then, within a decade at the end of the nineteenth century, archaeological discoveries revealed a whole series of tombs and other monuments that not only confirmed these rulers’ existence, but also showcased the skills of Egyptian craftsmen at the dawn of history.

For the Table of Contents, click here.

A rich study, with new research data, on eighteen Ptolemaic period sarcophagi housed in museums in Cairo, including the Grand Egyptian Museum

The individually designed anthropoid sarcophagi of the Ptolemaic period (ca. 330–30 BCE) offer a particularly rich and varied repertoire of hieroglyphic inscriptions and religious scenes. Being at the end of a long tradition of funerary literature, many of the epigraphs on these objects are variations or reinterpretations of older texts that have been circulated and transmitted over millennia.

Others are entirely new creations that provide insight into funerary beliefs of late ancient Egypt. The present volume is the second and last publication of a joint project between scholars from Cairo University and the University of Tübingen on Late and Ptolemaic period sarcophagi housed in the museums of Cairo. It includes the detailed publication of eighteen sarcophagi, which until now have only been known through brief descriptions. The facsimile drawings, detailed pictures, translations, and commentaries presented here will allow scholars to approach this corpus with a broad range of research questions.

A thorough transdisciplinary archaeological study of the ancient Egyptian Theban rock-cut tombs at Sheikh ‘Abd al-Qurna

In recent years, archeological research has undergone major changes. The material turn in archaeology and related disciplines prompted the adoption of sophisticated scientific, digital, and technical approaches and methods often conducted on a micro level, enhancing our understanding of depositional processes and of the creation and life of an archeological object.

This volume reflects seven seasons of transdisciplinary archaeological research at a cluster of rock-cut tombs in Sheikh ‘Abd al-Qurna, an ancient Egyptian hillside cemetery and part of the much larger Theban Necropolis. Organized in twelve main chapters, Life Histories of Theban Tombs presents current investigations in landscape archaeology (including recent excavations at a large debris hill previously covering a tomb), geo- and bioarcheology, the archaeology of tomb construction, burial practices, and domestic uses as well as various epigraphical, visual, and material studies. The last two sections provide additional insight into the applied recording, surveying, and visualization methods and techniques and the database system used for data recording and organization.

Contributors’ Affiliations:

• Martina Aeschlimann-Langer, Basel, Switzerland
• Zulema Barahona-Mendieta, University of Basel, Switzerland
• Susanne Bickel, University of Basel, Switzerland
• Oliver Bruderer, Zurich, Switzerland
• Rachael Colldeweih, Nagra, Wettingen, Switzerland
• Lucía Díaz-Iglesias Llanos, Spanish National Research Council, Madrid, Spain
• Xavier Droux, Hierakonpolis Expedition, Oxford, England
• Stéphane Fetler, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium
• Zan Gojcic, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH), Switzerland
• Charlotte Hunkeler, University of Basel, Switzerland
• Mahmoud Ibrahim, University of Cairo, Egypt
• Matjaž Kačičnik, Cairo, Egypt
• Iwona Kozieradzka-Ogunmakin, University of Manchester, England
• Lara Selina Kurmann, University of Basel, Switzerland
• Andrea Loprieno-Gnirs, University of Basel, Switzerland
• Sabrina Meyer, Canton of Zurich, Switzerland
• Matthias Müller, University of Basel, Switzerland
• Julianna K. Paksi, University of Basel and École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris, France
• Erico Peintner, Cairo, Egypt
• Matthew A. Perras, York University, Toronto, Canada
• Lukas Richner, canton of Basel-Landschaft, Switzerland
• Frank Rühli, University of Zurich, Switzerland
• Marina Sartori, University of Basel, Switzerland
• Nadine Schönhütte, Cologne Institute of Conservation Sciences (CICS), Cologne, Germany
• Roger Seiler, University of Zurich, Switzerland
• Stephan M. Unter, University of Basel, Switzerland
• André J. Veldmeijer, American University in Cairo, Egypt
• Noémi Villars, University of Basel, Switzerland
• Andreas Wieser, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH), Switzerland
• Andrea Wolter, ETH Engineering Geology Group, Zurich, Switzerland
• Martin Ziegler, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, (ETH), Switzerland