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Dealing with the Dead in Ancient Egypt
The Funerary Business of Petebaste
Koenraad Donker van HeelAn intimate look at the true story of the funerary business of a Theban mortuary priest 2800 years ago as unearthed by an ancient papyrus
Petebaste son of Peteamunip, the choachyte, or water-pourer, lived during the first half of the seventh century BCE in the reigns of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty Kushite kings Shabaka and Taharqa and was responsible for the comfortable and carefree afterlife of his deceased clients by bringing their weekly libations.
But Petebaste was also responsible for a wide range of other activities—he provided a tomb to the family of the deceased, managed the costs of the personnel and commodities, and took care of all necessary paperwork, while also tending to the gruesome preparation of the mortal remains of the deceased.
Drawing on an archive of eight abnormal hieratic papyri in the Louvre that deal specifically with the affairs of a single family, Donker van Heel takes a deep dive into the business dealings of this Theban mortuary priest. In intimate detail, he illuminates the final stage of the embalming and coffining process of a woman called Taperet (‘Mrs. Seedcorn’) on the night before she would be taken from the embalming workshop to her final resting place, providing fascinating insight into the practical day-to-day aspects of funerary practices in ancient Egypt.
To read an excerpt, click here.
For the Table of Contents, click here.
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22 March 2021
Hardbound
156 pp.15X23cm
29.95
Sacred Flames
The Power of Artificial Light in Ancient Egypt
Meghan E. StrongArtificial lighting is one of the earliest tools used by humans. By the time we began to paint cave walls, we were producing lamps consisting of an illuminant, a fat or oil, and a wick, such as a strip of fabric or a piece of reed or wood.
Drawing on archaeological, textual, and iconographic sources, Meghan Strong examines the symbolic part that artificial lighting played in religious, economic, and social spheres in ancient Egyptian culture. From the earliest identifiable examples of lighting devices to the infiltration of Hellenistic lamps in the seventh century BC, Sacred Flames explores the sensory experience of illumination in ancient Egypt, the shadows, sheen, color, and movement that resulted when lighting interacted with different spaces and surfaces. The soft, flickering light from lamps or hand-held lighting devices not only facilitated the navigation of darkened environments, such as allowing workers to see in underground chambers in the Valley of the Kings, or served as temple offerings, but also impacted upon the viewer’s perception of a space and the objects within it.
Sacred Flames illustrates the active role that lighting played in Egyptian society, providing a richer understanding of the symbolic and social value of artificial light and the role of lighting in ritual space and performance in ancient Egyptian culture, while serving as a case study of the broader impact of artificial light in the ancient world.
To read an excerpt, click here.
For the Table of Contents, click here.
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18 April 2021
Hardbound
272 pp.51 b&w
15X23cm
49.95
The First Pharaohs
Their Lives and Afterlives
Aidan DodsonA 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.
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5 September 2021
Hardbound
224 pp.103 color and b&w illus.
19X24cm
29.95
The Egyptian Bourse
Samir RaafatForeword byHH Prince Abbas Hilmi
Foreword byHE Youssef Boutros Ghali
The Egyptian Stock Exchange in its glory years is beautifully remembered in this collector’s volume of stock and bond certificates and brief histories of the Egyptian companies which issued them
This large-format album of reproduced images of choice stock and bond certificates issued in by registered companies through the Egyptian Bourse, or Stock Exchange, will be a source of delight and fascination, not only for scripophilists, notaphilists, and economists, but for anyone interested in early twentieth-century Egyptian financial history and memorabilia and the aesthetic value of these beautiful collectors’ items. Each certificate tells a story about the company which issued it, and the fascinating and dynamic business families that drove Egypt’s economy at the time.
Founded in 1903 at the behest of Maurice “Moise” Cattaui Bey (1848–1924), scion of one of Cairo’s then most powerful business families, the newly incorporated Bourse and Banking Company of Egypt Limited, also known as the Bourse Khediviale du Caire, was initially housed in the Manuk Building, once home to the Ottoman Bank on Adly (formerly Maghrabi) Street. It was later moved to a building at the center of Cairo’s downtown district of Ismailia, not far from the National Bank of Egypt (today’s Central Bank). The real-estate boom which began in Cairo around 1895 would end in what became known in the annals of speculative history as the Crash of 1907. In The Egyptian Bourse Samir Raafat tells the story of the rise and fall of the Egyptian Bourse, from the sale of the century by Khedive Ismail of Egypt’s shares in the Suez Canal in 1875 to the Free Officers coup of 1952. Beautifully illustrated with more than fifty vintage shares and stocks in full color.
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15 April 2021
Hardbound
112 pp.15.50x12cm
39.95
The Life of Bishoi
The Greek, Arabic, Syriac, and Ethiopic Lives
Edited by Tim VivianMaged S.A. Mikhail
Four translations of major accounts of the life of the fourth-century Egyptian desert father St. Bishoi, in one volume
Saint Bishoi of Scetis (d. ca. 417) enjoys tremendous popularity throughout the Christian east, particularly among the Copts. He lived during a remarkable era in which a litany of larger-than-life monastics lived and interacted with one another. Even then, Bishoi stood out as the founder of one of the four great monasteries of Scetis (Wadi al-Natrun): those of Macarius, John the Little, Bishoi, and the Baramus. Yet in spite of Bishoi’s prominence, the various recensions of his hagio-biography have received sporadic, scattered attention.
The Life of Bishoi joins other Lives of eminent monastics of early-Egyptian monasticism: the Lives of Antony, Daniel, John the Little, Macarius, Paphnutius, Shenoute, and Syncletica. These Lives are vital for what they tell us about monastic politeia (way of life), spirituality, and theology, both of the early monastics and of those who later wrote, translated, and revised the Lives. They appeared first in Greek and Coptic, and later generations translated and revised them into Syriac, Arabic and Ge‘ez (Ethiopic).
This definitive volume contains the first English translation of the Greek, Syriac, Arabic, and Ethiopic Lives of Bishoi, each translation accompanied by an introduction that focuses on certain aspects of the source text. It also has the first transcription and English translation of an important Greek text. The General Introduction provides rich context about the texts and textual traditions in the various languages, and thoroughly revises our knowledge about the Syriac tradition, the translation of the Syriac text here now consequently providing what is the best translation in any modern language.
To read an excerpt, click here.
For the Table of Contents, click here.
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25 March 2022
Hardbound
390 pp.15X23cm
49.95
Alexandrea ad Ægyptum
Sherif BoraieA nostalgic, gorgeously illustrated anthology of nineteenth and twentieth century writing on Alexandria
At the end of the eighteenth century, the city of Alexandria was a small backwater with a population of less than five thousand. Then in 1801 Muhammad Ali arrived in Egypt as second‐in‐command of an Albanian contingent, part of an Ottoman force sent to re‐occupy the country after Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion in 1798. By 1805, Ali had become ruler of Egypt and in a short time, he built a new modern cosmopolitan Alexandria―a thriving commercial hub and court city, the country’s unofficial capital, and home to a large number of immigrants from the surrounding Mediterranean. Alexandrea ad Ægyptum, the old Latin adage meaning “Alexandria by Egypt,” re‐emerged, underlining Alexandria’s singular separateness.
Foreign dominance was further reinforced by British colonialism beginning in 1882, until 26 July 1956, when, from the parapet of the Bourse on Muhammad Ali Square in Alexandria, Gamal Abd al-Nasser announced the nationalization of the Suez Canal. As the city’s sizeable foreign community left, following the Suez War then through waves of nationalization, the international Alexandria ceased to exist. This beautifully illustrated anthology brings together the work of contemporaneous writers who witnessed the stages of Alexandria’s dramatic rise and growth during the nineteenth and early- to mid-twentieth centuries.
To read an excerpt, click here.
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8 May 2021
Hardbound
256 pp.24x19cm
45
On the Nile in the Golden Age of Travel
Andrew HumphreysA colorfully illustrated celebration of the classic era of cruising on the Nile, new in paperback
Since Antony and Cleopatra honeymooned on the Nile on a gilded barge, visitors to Egypt have taken to the river as the best way to experience the country’s wonders. Early travelers took a dahabiya, an elegant triangular-sailed houseboat, and leisurely meandered from riverside site to site, for three months or more. Then from the late nineteenth century, Thomas Cook of Leicester, England, revolutionized the journey with a fleet of specially built paddle steamers. For the next sixty years these ‘floating palaces,’ with their private cabins, and dining, smoking, and viewing salons, red-uniformed dragoman guides, and organized donkey excursions, carried the aristocratic, moneyed, and adventurous of international society of the time.
Using period photography, and colorful vintage posters and advertising material, this book tells the story of the people, the places, and the boats, from pioneering Nile travelers like Amelia Edwards and Lucie Duff Gordon, through to famed later passengers, such as Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Conan Doyle, and, of course, Agatha Christie, whose staging of a death on the Nile only added to the allure.
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5 September 2021
Paperback
184 pp.274 illus., including 110 in color
19X24cm
19.95
A Selection of Ptolemaic Anthropoid Sarcophagi in Cairo
Edited by
Christian LeitzTarek Tawfik
Zeinab Mahrous
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.
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5 September 2021
Hardbound
455 pp.103 color and b&w illus.
19X24cm
100
Ottoman Cairo
Religious Architecture from Sultan Selim to Napoleon
Chahinda KarimA unique, richly illustrated study of Ottoman religious buildings standing today in Cairo
With the conquest in 1517 CE of Egypt by the Ottomans, Cairo lost its position as the capital of the Islamic empire to Istanbul but it retained an eminent position as the second most important city, with Egypt still regarded as one of the wealthiest provinces of the new empire. Round minarets with pointed hoods, as symbols of the new rulers, began filling the landscape alongside the octagonal minarets with pavilion tops of the Mamluks, new mosques, zawiyas, and madrasas/takiyas were built to emphasize the continuation of Sunni Islamic rule, while the use of tiles imported from Turkey introduced new decorative styles to the city’s existing rich carvings and marble paneling.
This book invites readers and students to revisit a long-overlooked era of Cairo’s architectural evolution, offering a unique, comprehensive study of Ottoman religious buildings still standing today. It provides detailed descriptions and walk-throughs of the buildings covered, visually, through its rich collection of plans, line drawings, and photographs, and through the narrative that infuses each image with life, shedding light on the continuous evolution of architecture in Cairo even after the city had ceased to be the capital of the Islamic empire.
To read an excerpt, click here.
For the Table of Contents, click here.
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20 December 2021
Hardbound
256 pp.189 b&w and 18 color illus.
19X24cm
40
Abu Simbel
A Short Guide to the Temples
Nigel Fletcher-JonesAn indispensable companion and guide to one of the world’s great archaeological sites
The three-thousand-year-old rock-cut temples at Abu Simbel and the story of their rescue from the rising waters of Lake Nasser in the 1960s are almost as familiar worldwide as the tale of the gold funerary mask and brief life of the boy king Tutankhamun. Yet although they are among the most celebrated, visited, and photographed archaeological sites in the world, the two temples are among the least understood by the visitor.
In this lucidly written, beautifully illustrated guide, Nigel Fletcher-Jones explains the main features of both temples, discusses what they teach us about ancient Egypt during the reign of Rameses II (1265–1200 BC), and illustrates which gods and goddesses were worshipped here.
With over 50 new photographs, drawings, and diagrams, and packed with fascinating insights, Abu Simbel: A Short Guide to the Temples is an indispensable companion and souvenir to one of the world’s great archaeological sites.
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20 December 2021
Paperback
200 pp.46 color, 12 b/w
21x21cm
9.99
Abu Simbel
A Short Guide to the Temples
Nigel Fletcher-JonesAn indispensable companion and guide to one of the world’s great archaeological sites
The three-thousand-year-old rock-cut temples at Abu Simbel and the story of their rescue from the rising waters of Lake Nasser in the 1960s are almost as familiar worldwide as the tale of the gold funerary mask and brief life of the boy king Tutankhamun. Yet although they are among the most celebrated, visited, and photographed archaeological sites in the world, the two temples are among the least understood by the visitor.
In this lucidly written, beautifully illustrated guide, Nigel Fletcher-Jones explains the main features of both temples, discusses what they teach us about ancient Egypt during the reign of Rameses II (1265–1200 BC), and illustrates which gods and goddesses were worshipped here.
With over 50 new photographs, drawings, and diagrams, and packed with fascinating insights, Abu Simbel: A Short Guide to the Temples is an indispensable companion and souvenir to one of the world’s great archaeological sites.
...read more
20 December 2021
Paperback
200 pp.46 color, 12 b/w
21x21cm
9.99
Abu Simbel
A Short Guide to the Temples
Nigel Fletcher-JonesAn indispensable companion and guide to one of the world’s great archaeological sites
The three-thousand-year-old rock-cut temples at Abu Simbel and the story of their rescue from the rising waters of Lake Nasser in the 1960s are almost as familiar worldwide as the tale of the gold funerary mask and brief life of the boy king Tutankhamun. Yet although they are among the most celebrated, visited, and photographed archaeological sites in the world, the two temples are among the least understood by the visitor.
In this lucidly written, beautifully illustrated guide, Nigel Fletcher-Jones explains the main features of both temples, discusses what they teach us about ancient Egypt during the reign of Rameses II (1265–1200 BC), and illustrates which gods and goddesses were worshipped here.
With over 50 new photographs, drawings, and diagrams, and packed with fascinating insights, Abu Simbel: A Short Guide to the Temples is an indispensable companion and souvenir to one of the world’s great archaeological sites.
...read more
20 December 2021
Paperback
200 pp.46 color, 12 b/w
21x21cm
9.99
Egyptian Flavors
50 Recipes
Dyna EldaiefThe delights of Egypt’s flavor-filled cuisine come to life in this beautifully illustrated gift book, bringing quintessential Middle Eastern recipes within the reach of cooks everywhere
Egyptian cuisine is one of the world’s oldest and yet least known food traditions. This charming, pocket-sized collection of recipes is the perfect introduction to Egyptian cooking. From classic starters and breakfast dishes like ta‘miya (falafel) and fuul medammis (slow-cooked fava beans), to well-loved main meals such as stuffed cabbage leaves (mahshi cromb), and mouthwatering almond pudding and fritter balls soaked in syrup, Egyptian Flavors leads you on a wonderful discovery of this unique and delightful cuisine.
Celebrated chef Dyna Eldaief offers 50 easy-to-follow recipes that are rich with the vegetables, legumes, and meats that are central to Egyptian cooking, calling forth the sun-baked land of the Nile and inviting expert and novice alike to bring exciting new flavors to their home kitchen.
To read an excerpt, click here.
For the Table of Contents, click here.
Dyna’s zalabya?
20 December 2021
Hardbound
160 pp.25 color photographs
12X19cm
24.95
The Tomb Chapel of Menna (TT 69)
The Art, Culture, and Science of Painting in an Egyptian Tomb
Edited by Melinda HartwigThe most detailed set of studies ever on all aspects of one of the most beautifully decorated Egyptian non-royal tombs, new in paperback
This lavishly illustrated book is the culmination of a project to document and conserve the tomb of Menna, one of the most beautiful and complex painted tombs of the ancient Egyptian necropolis at Luxor. Through conservation, the tomb, which previously lay open to environmental influence, was brought back to its former glory.
Aided by non-invasive methods of scientific analysis, the historical and cultural importance of Menna’s paintings can now be viewed and studied and enjoyed by a worldwide audience. High-definition photography and drawings complement specialist essays by scholars, scientists, and technicians, who discuss the artistic and cultural significance of the paintings, their architectural context, and scientific importance.
Directed by Dr. Hartwig and administered by the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) as part of its Egyptian Antiquities Conservation Project, the project was funded by a grant from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), sponsored by Georgia State University, and carried out in collaboration with Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities.
Contributors:
– Cristina Beretta is based in Edinburgh, Scotland
– Pieter Collet lives in the Netherlands
– Katy Doyle lives in Boston, Massachusetts (USA)
– Elsa van Elslande, Laboratoire d’Archéologie Moléculaire et Structurale (LAMS), CNRS is based in Paris, France
– Renata García Moreno, University of Liège, Belgium
– Melinda Hartwig, Georgia State University, Atlanta (USA)
– François-Philippe Hocquet, University of Liège, Belgium
– Gregory Howarth is based in London, England
– Alexandra Kosinova is based in London, England
– Kerstin Leterme, University of Liège, Belgium
– Bianca Madden is based in Oxford, England
– François Mathis, University of Liège, Belgium
– Mark Perry is co-director of the Perry Lithgow Partnership Ltd., Chipping Norton, England
– David Strivay, University of Liège, Belgium
– Douglas Thorp is based in London, England
– Peter Vandenabeele, Ghent University, Belgium
To read an excerpt, click here.
For the Table of Contents, click here.
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20 December 2021
Paperback
240 pp.134 color illus.
23X30cm
39.95
The Mosaics of Alexandria
Pavements of Greek and Roman Egypt
Anne-Marie Guimier-SorbetsTranslated by Colin Clement
A beautifully illustrated study of mosaic art in Greco-Roman Egypt
The art of the mosaic was developed by the Greeks, notably within the royal court of Macedonia, and was initially unknown to the Egyptians. Macedonian mosaicists then established busy workshops in the capital, Alexandria, and in the new towns of Greek Egypt. Under the stimulus of commissions from the Ptolemaic court, these workshops soon showed that they were capable of innovation. Beginning with pebbles, they then used tesserae of different sizes, and adopted new materials (glass, faience, paint) in order to transpose onto the floor images from grand paintings, which was the major art form of the time and was characterized by the vivid use of color.
Alexandrian mosaicists were at the forefront of creativity during the Hellenistic period and their influence spread around the Mediterranean. After the Roman conquest of Egypt they adapted to the tastes of their new sponsors and to changes in architecture and were able to retain an important place within this art as it developed across the entire empire, in Rome and from east to west.
The Mosaics of Alexandria provides the first overview of the mosaics and pavements of Egypt that were created between the end of the fourth century BC and the sixth century AD. It presents a selection of some seventy mosaics and pavements from Alexandria and Greco-Roman Egypt. Generally little known and more often than not unpublished, these works are illustrated here in full color, some for the first time. The aim is to better understand the artistic and artisanal production of a type of decoration that played an important role within the living environment of the ancients.
To read an excerpt, click here.
For the Table of Contents, click here.
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5 September 2021
Hardbound
256 pp.377 illus. (55 b&w, 321 color)
24x24cm
50
I Do Not Sleep
A Novel
Ihsan Abdel KouddousTranslated by Jonathan Smolin
A story of betrayal, desire, and family drama, written by a giant of Egyptian popular fiction who shocked readers in the 1950s when this Lolita-esque novel first appeared and whose work has never before been available in English
Sixteen-year-old Nadia had been raised by her father, after her parents divorced when she was only a baby. Indulged and petulant, she remained the only female in her father’s life. But when she returns from boarding school to find that he has remarried without her knowledge, she conspires to restore her rightful place, creating misery, confusion, and a flood of unexpected consequences in her wake.
Written as a letter, a confession, by now twenty-one-year old Nadia, Ihsan Abdel Kouddous’s classic novel of revenge and betrayal challenges patriarchal norms with its strong female characters and brazen sexuality, and continues to speak to the complex human condition. It dives into middle-class life, and lays bare the repressed desires, seething jealousies, and complicated dramas of family.
To read an excerpt, click here.
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10 December 2021
Paperback
364 pp.14x22cm
14.99
Writing the History of Mount Lebanon
Church Historians and Maronite Identity
Mouannes HojairiA meticulous deconstruction of Maronite history writing and the ways in which Lebanese nationalist myths have been invented and perpetuated by historians
As a frequently contested territory, Mount Lebanon has an equally contested history, one that is produced, shaped, and revised by as many players as those who molded the Lebanese state since its inception in 1920. The Lebanese Maronite Church has had more at stake in the process of history writing than any other group or institution. It is arguably one of the most influential institutions in Lebanese history and definitely the most influential institution in the country at the moment of the state’s birth.
Writing the History of Mount Lebanon traces the genealogy of Maronite identity by examining the historical traditions that shaped its contemporary manifestation. It explores the presence of a tradition in Maronite Church historiography that was maintained by the historians of the Church, whose claims and hypotheses ultimately defined the communal identity of the Maronites in Mount Lebanon and deeply influenced subsequent Lebanese national identity. Rooted in a reexamination of the existing literature and bringing evidence to bear on this particular aspect of history-writing in Lebanon, it shows how early Maronite ecclesiastic historiography’s plea for inclusion as a part of Catholic orthodoxy was transformed and recast in subsequent centuries by lay and secular historians into a demand for exclusion and exclusivity, which in turn led to the rise of exclusivist political identities based on sectarian belonging in Mount Lebanon.
Ultimately, Mouannes Hojairi shows how history-writing is one of the main instruments in generating and perpetuating nationalist ideologies and how historians are central agents of nationality.
To read an excerpt, click here.
For the Table of Contents, click here.
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10 October 2021
Hardbound
240 pp.15.50x12cm
49.95
South Yemen’s Independence Struggle
Generations of Resistance
Anne-Linda Amira AugustinA bold firsthand account of one of the persistent Arab uprisings, in Yemen
At its beginning in 2007, the Southern Movement in South Yemen was a loose merger of different people, most of them former army personnel and state employees of the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY) who were forced from their jobs after the war in 1994, only four years after the unification between the PDRY and the Yemen Arab Republic.
This bold ethnographic account of a persistent Arab uprising, in a rarely studied corner of the Middle East, explores why the Southern Movement has grown so tremendously during the last decade, and how it developed from a primarily social movement demanding social rights into a mass protest movement claiming independence for a state that had long vanished from the world map. Anne-Linda Amira Augustin asks why so many young people born after 1990 joined the movement and demanded the re-establishment of a state that they had never themselves experienced.
At the core of South Yemeni resistance lies the transmission from generation to generation of a dominant counternarrative, which may be seen as the continuation and rehabilitation of the PDRY’s national narrative. This narrative, amplified through everyday communication in families and neighborhoods, but also by media-makers, journalists, school and university teachers, civil society actors, and by the movement’s activists, opposes the national-unity narrative of the Republic of Yemen and intensifies the demands for an independent state.
To read an excerpt, click here.
For the Table of Contents, click here.
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5 November 2021
Hardbound
326 pp.12 b&w illus.
15 x 23cm
50
Fayoum Pottery
Ceramic Arts and Crafts in an Egyptian Oasis
R. Neil HewisonLavishly illustrated with over over 250 full-color photographs of unique designs and rare methods, providing an in-depth look at the pottery produced in the Fayoum
The Fayoum, a broad, fertile depression in Egypt’s Western Desert, known for its great salt lake, its rich green fields, and its unique pharaonic and Greco-Roman remains, is also home to three very different centers of pottery production. The potters of Kom Oshim specialize in decorated garden pots and other utilitarian ware, and guard the special secret of how to make the largest clay vessels in Egypt, up to an extraordinary two and a half meters tall. At al-Nazla, ancient traditions are kept alive, as members of a single extended family continue to use millennia-old techniques passed down from generation to generation, hand-forming among other things their distinctive spherical water jars with amazing dexterity and speed. In the small village of Tunis, the establishment of a pottery school by a Swiss couple in 1990 led to a complete transformation, and the village now hosts more than twenty-five pottery workshops and showrooms, whose products are sold in Cairo, London, and New York.
In this lively insight into a varied and vital craft, the author reveals the stories of the three villages and the skilled potters who make their living there, looking at how they learned their trade and how they work, from the preparation of the clay to the formation of the pots on the wheel or by hand, to the decoration, the glazing, and the firing, and finally to the display or distribution and sale of the finished product.
For past and future travelers to Egypt, lovers of the craft of pottery, practitioners, and collectors, this beautifully illustrated exploration of the ceramics of the Fayoum will inspire and enchant.
To read an excerpt, click here.
For the Table of Contents, click here.
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20 December 2021
Hardbound
256 pp.267 color illus.
24X21cm
32.50
Islamic Cairo in Maps
Finding the Monuments
Yasser M. AyadA portable, easy-to-use map guide that locates over 700 hundred Islamic-era monuments in historic Cairo using the most sophisticated Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology
This portable, easy-to-use map guide helps you locate over seven hundred Islamic-era monuments in Cairo’s historic core, stretching from the city’s northern walls all the way southward to the Mosque of Ibn Tulun and the Citadel, and beyond to Coptic Cairo, which includes monuments that pre-date Islamic rule. Clearly divided into six digestible main sections, the first five contain clusters of monuments, while the sixth covers structures scattered all around the old Cairene urban fabric.
The clear, uncluttered cartographic style makes finding where you want to go a pleasure, and the maps are accompanied by a comprehensive index of monuments that gives their dates where known, their location referenced to their corresponding map pages, and a timeline of key periods and dynasties.
Attractively designed in full color and including over twenty photographs of key monuments, this guide is conveniently packed into a slim 104 pages―handy enough to take anywhere and great for planning and remembering excursions. It is not only an ideal companion for the city’s visitors and residents but an invaluable resource for historians, writers, and students.
To read an excerpt, click here.
For the Table of Contents, click here.
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10 January 2023
Paperback
104 pp.77 maps and 22 photos
15x21cm
16.95