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For both ancient Egypt and Iran, as a cultural feature, incestuous relationships are usually dismissed on the grounds that they are only found as the exception, being allowed for royalty as representatives for the divine on earth, or that the evidence for such relationships are unreliable. Neither view, from the perspective of this study, is tenable. This work examines the evidence for marriage and sexual relations between siblings, and between a parent and child, in ancient Egypt and pre-Islamic Iran. The book restricts its examination to incestuous relationships between members of non-royal nuclear families and puts forth arguments against the generally held axiom that the prohibition of incest is a universal phenomenon.
Lotus and Laurel brings together a wealth of essays in celebration of Paul John Frandsen, who has had a distinguished career as a scholar of ancient Egyptian language and religion. The contributors are friends, colleagues, or former students, and all are leading authorities in Egyptology. Evoking Frandsen's wide range of interests, they touch on a breadth of topics, including religious thought and representation; social questions of gender, kinship, and temple slavery; and studies of grammar and etymology. More than a tribute to this important scholar in Egyptology, Lotus and Laurel is a window onto some of the most important work going on now in the field.
This volume presents the first edition of a hitherto unattested narrative from the Tebtunis temple library (1st-2nd century AD). The story seems to have formed part of the so-called Inaros Cycle; it is set in the reign of king Necho I (672-664 BC), who is mainly known for his rebellion against the Assyrians, and also mentions general Anosis. The text makes repeated mention of the castration of an individual, who is made into a eunuch. Rana Sérida holds a PhD in Egyptology from the University of Copenhagen, where she is currently a postdoctoral research fellow. Her research focuses on Egyptian literary texts, particularly their utilization as markers of a collective identity.
This groundbreaking, first basic reference work on ancient religious beliefs collects and organizes available information on ten ancient cultures and traditions, including Greece, Rome, and Mesopotamia, and offers an expansive, comparative perspective on each one.
The Egyptian language, with its written documentation spreading from the Early Bronze Age (Ancient Egyptian) to Christian times (Coptic), has rarely been the object of typological studies, grammatical analysis mainly serving philological purposes. This volume offers now a detailed analysis and a diachronic discussion of the non-verbal patterns of the Egyptian language, from the Pyramid Texts (Earlier Egyptian) to Coptic (Later Egyptian), based on an extensive use of data, especially for later phases. By providing a narrative contextualisation and a linguistic glossing of all examples, it addresses the needs not only of students of Egyptian and Coptic, but also of a linguistic readership. Aft...
This history of land tenure under the Ptolemies explores the relationship between the new Ptolemaic state and the ancient traditions of landholding and tenure. Departing from the traditional emphasis on the Fayyum, it offers a coherent framework for understanding the structure of the Ptolemaic state, and thus of the economy as a whole. Drawing on both Greek and demotic papyri, as well as hieroglyphic inscriptions and theories taken from the social sciences, Professor Manning argues that the traditional central state 'despotic' model of the Egyptian economy is insufficient. The result is a subtler picture of the complex relationship between the demands of the new state and the ancient, locally organized social structure of Egypt. By revealing the dynamics between central and local power in Egypt, the book shows that Ptolemaic economic power ultimately shaped Roman Egyptian social and economic institutions.
Cutting-edge research by twenty-four international scholars on female power, agency, health, and literacy in ancient Egypt There has been considerable scholarship in the last fifty years on the role of ancient Egyptian women in society. With their ability to work outside the home, inherit and dispense of property, initiate divorce, testify in court, and serve in local government, Egyptian women exercised more legal rights and economic independence than their counterparts throughout antiquity. Yet, their agency and autonomy are often downplayed, undermined, or outright ignored. In Women in Ancient Egypt twenty-four international scholars offer a corrective to this view by presenting the lates...
Where Dreams May Come was the winner of the 2018 Charles J. Goodwin Award of Merit, awarded by the Society for Classical Studies. In this book, Gil H. Renberg examines the ancient religious phenomenon of “incubation", the ritual of sleeping at a divinity’s sanctuary in order to obtain a prophetic or therapeutic dream. Most prominently associated with the Panhellenic healing god Asklepios, incubation was also practiced at the cult sites of numerous other divinities throughout the Greek world, but it is first known from ancient Near Eastern sources and was established in Pharaonic Egypt by the time of the Macedonian conquest; later, Christian worship came to include similar practices. Renberg’s exhaustive study represents the first attempt to collect and analyze the evidence for incubation from Sumerian to Byzantine and Merovingian times, thus making an important contribution to religious history. This set consists of two books.
The Oxford Handbook of Egyptology offers a comprehensive survey of the entire study of ancient Egypt, from prehistory through to the end of the Roman period. Transcending conventional boundaries between archaeological and ancient textual analysis and bringing together 63 chapters that range widely across the various archaeological, philological, and cultural sub-disciplines, authored by recognized experts in their respective fields, it highlights theextent to which the discipline has diversified and stresses the need for it to seek multidisciplinary methods and broader collaborations if it is to remain contemporary and relevant. Authoritative yet accessible,it is an invaluable resource for scholars, students, and general readers alike.
The source material of the book is translated from the only existent Sasanian law text and two Rivâyats from the first half of the ninth and the first half of the tenth century, at which time the Zoroastrians survived only in minority communities. The original text is presented in photocopy with a transcription. The analysis is concerned with four institutions in the sphere of family law: Guardianship, marriage of levirate, marriage of a woman in order to provide her father or brother with an heir and marriage between close relatives (incest taboo did not exist). The issue of the research is to show how the social conditions and internal family economy with its power balance is reflected in the rules of the Sasanian law, and that the differences apparent in the later texts are not accidental, but form a pattern caused by the changing social conditions, and that the law was changed in order to help preserve the Zoroastrian minority in adversity under Arab rule.