One of the most remarkable inventions of ancient Egypt was the making of "paper" from the papyrus plant. As early as 3000 B.C. sheets and rolls of papyrus provided an ideal surface for writing with a reed pen and pigments of carbon and red ocher. Egyptian scribes used papyrus for legal and administrative records, letters about business and personal life, as well as for literary texts and compendia of knowledge. Religious hymns and litanies were recorded, as were the great collections of formulae to secure life after death, the Books of the Dead. The authors examine the methods of making and conserving papyrus, the various scripts written on it, the writing practices of the scribes, and the different uses of papyrus under the Pharaohs and their successors, the Ptolemies and the Roman emperors. Egypt has preserved much Greek literature and administrative writings, and papyrus remained the writing material of the Mediterranean world until it was eclipsed in the ninth century A.D. by cloth paper from the Orient, ending a tradition that had lasted four thousand years.

Papyrus (Egyptian Bookshelf)

Politics & Social Sciences

Quirke, Stephen

Parkinson, Richard

Social Sciences

University of Texas Press

TRACES THE EVOLUTION OF THE ROYAL NAMES FROM 3000 BC TO THE ROMANS. WITH AN EXTENSIVE LIST, WITH 40 ILLUSTRATIONS AND 250 CARTOUCHES

Who Were the Pharaohs?: A History of Their Names With a List of Cartouches

History

Ancient Civilizations

Dover Pubns

Did the ancient Egyptians believe in many gods, or was it one god in many guises? The answer lies in the special relationship between the sun god Ra and the king, in his central title "Son of Ra." Stephen Quirke draws together recent advances in our understanding of the cult of Ra, from the third millennium BC. to the Roman conquest of Egypt and the rise of Christianity. He explores the Egyptian sources for the character of Ra, his pivotal role in creation, and the way in which the Egyptians expressed the world as physical matter unfurling from the sun. Through select inscriptions and manuscripts the reader enters the closed world of the king as he carried out his principal function, to maintain life itself. With prayer, sacrifices, and the power of knowledge, Pharaoh ensured the smooth passage of the sun hour by hour through the sky. The epicenter of the cult was the temple of Ra at Iunu (the Heliopolis"city of the sun"of the ancient Greeks). All but inaccessible within the urban spread of modern Cairo, the sacred precinct of Iunu formed the greatest religious complex of ancient Egypt. Excavations at the site offer a glimpse of vanished magnificence, echoed in displaced monuments within Egypt and around the globe, and in better-preserved sites inspired by the solar city, such as Karnak and Tanis. Pyramids and obelisks represent the outstanding architectural and engineering achievements of ancient Egypt, and here their precise links to the sun cult are examined. The book closes with an account of Akhenaten, the most exclusive son of Ra, who transformed the Ra cult into the royal worship of the sun-disk, Aten. From this richly rewarding and provocative book we learn just how central the sun and its cult were to ancient kingship and personal belief in the Valley of the Nile. 92 illustrations.

The Cult of Ra: Sun-Worship in Ancient Egypt

Thames&Hudson

The Rosetta Stone Facsimilie Drawing

Andrews, Carol

British Museum Press

London. 1990. The Trustees of the British Museum. 24x17. 80p.

WHO WERE THE PHARAOH ? /ANGLAIS

Biographies & Memoirs

Leaders & Notable People

BRITISH MUSEUM

This volume publishes papers on the Egyptian temple given at the 1994 colloquium of the Department of Egyptian Antiquities, British Museum, along with other invited contributions. The topics range across the full breadth of the subject in area and time, from Rainer Stadelmann's new interpretation of the pyramid complex in the old kingdom, to Betsy Bryan's reassessment of the statuary from the temple for the cult of Amenhotep III on teh West bank at Thebes, and Jan Quaegebeur and Claude Traunecker's report on their most recent work recording the forgotten Graeco-Roman temples of Shenhur and el-Qala. Together, the contributions amply reflect the vibrancy in this field of research into ancient Egypt.

The Temple in Ancient Egypt: New Discoveries and Recent Research

Arts & Photography

Architecture

This tightly focused collection of essays by a distinguished group of scholars analyses the degree to which expressions of emotion in ancient literature and art become an 'artistic' rather than a 'social' construct. To what degree do literary genres, philosophy and visual arts produce expectations for the arousal of certain emotions? Are the emotions of women, for example, represented differently in different genres? How and why do literary genres and visual arts concentrate on specific emotions and stylise them accordingly, and how do particular emotions relate to gender within literary texts? The book will be of interest to all students and scholars of classical literature and gender studies.

Hidden Hands: Egyptian Workforces in Petrie Excavation Archives, 1880-1924 (BCP Egyptology)

Bristol Classical Press

Quirke is an Egyptian antiquities curator at the British Museum. He tells the history of three texts designed to guarantee life beyond death the Pyramid Texts, the Coffin Texts, and the Book of the Dead and discusses a pharaonic tradition that spanned 3,000 years. Illustrated with color photographs by Forman. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Hieroglyphs and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt

Forman, Werner

Middle East

Univ of Oklahoma Pr

The Rosetta Stone

Americas

Harry N.Abrams, Inc.

A thematic dictionary of the most important titles of the Late Middle Kingdom, with a short description and short bibliography for each title.

Titles and Bureaux of Egypt 1850-1700 BC (GHP Egyptology)

Golden House Publications

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