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Taking as the basis of her study the premise that the boundaries of history and literature are difficult to define, and that the two disciplines represent related types of narrative discourse, Samia Mehrez examines the work of three leading contemporary Egyptian writers: the Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, Sonallah Ibrahim, and Gamal al-Ghitani. Mehrez delves into the relationship between history and narrative literature and shows that both attempt to transform 'reality' and 'life' into historical structures of meaning. By analyzing the works of these authors in terms of the relationship between authority and the production of narrative literature, she reveals a context in which literature be...
A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. After the deaths of Antony and Cleopatra, Rome finally took control of Egypt. This occupation simultaneously facilitated and circumscribed the exchange of goods, people, and ideas along the paths carved across Rome’s burgeoning empire. In this book, Edward Kelting sets out to recapture one of these systems of exchange: the vibrant literary tradition known as Aegyptiaca—or “Egyptian things”—in which culturally mixed authors wrote about Egypt for a Greek and Roman audience. These authors have been dismissed as not really “Egyptian,” and their contemporary popularity has been ignored. But as Kelting powerfully argues, this genre in fact constitutes a vibrant intellectual tradition, developed from heterogeneous influences but deeply engaged with Egypt’s pharaonic past. In contrast to usual narratives of Roman domination, Kelting uncovers a complex project of political engagement and cultural translation in which Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans all participated.
Gathers the religious and magical texts used in ancient Egypt to give the deceased a satisfactory afterlife and the power to leave his tomb when necessary.
First published in the 1940s and widely condemned as obscene, The Egyptian outsold every other American novel published that same year, and remains a classic; readers worldwide have testified to its life-changing power. It is a full-bodied re-creation of a largely forgotten era in the world’s history: an Egypt when pharaohs contended with the near-collapse of history’s greatest empire. This epic tale encompasses the whole of the then-known world, from Babylon to Crete, from Thebes to Jerusalem, while centering around one unforgettable figure: Sinuhe, a man of mysterious origins who rises from the depths of degradation to get close to the Pharoah...
The Egyptians created a world of supernatural forces so vivid, powerful and inescapable that controlling one's destiny within it was a constant preoccupation. In life, supernatural forces manifested themselves through misfortune and illness,and after death were faced for eternity in the Otherworld, along with the divine gods who controlled the universe. The Book of the Dead empowered the reader to overcome the dangers lurking in the Otherworld and to become one with the gods who governed. Barry Kemp selects a number of spells to explore who and what the Egyptians feared and the kind of assistance that the Book offered them, revealing a relationship between the human individual and the divine quite unlike that found in the major faiths of the modern world.
Upon its initial release in Arabic in the fall of 2014, Using Life received acclaim in Egypt and the wider Arab world. But in 2016, Ahmed Naji was sentenced to two years in prison after a reader complained that an excerpt published in a literary journal harmed public morality. His imprisonment marks the first time in modern Egypt that an author has been jailed for a work of literature. Writers and literary organizations around the world rallied to support Naji, and he was released in December 2016. His original conviction was overturned in May 2017 but, at the time of printing, he is awaiting retrial and banned from leaving Egypt. Set in modern-day Cairo, Using Life follows a young filmmaker...
This volume offers a survey about what is known about the Ancient Egyptians' vision of the afterlife and an examination of these beliefs that were written down in books that were later discovered in royal tombs. The contents of the texts range from the collection of spells in the Book of the Dead, which was intended to offer practical assistance on the journey to the afterlife, to the detailed accounts of the hereafter provided in the Books of the Netherworld. The author looks closely at these latter works, while summarizing the contents of the Book of the Dead and other widely studied examples of the genre. For each composition, he discusses the history of its ancient transmission and its decipherment in modern times, supplying bibliographic information for any text editions. He also seeks to determine whether this literature as a whole presents a monolithic conception of the afterlife. The volume features many drawings from the books themselves.