Table of Contents: Preface; William A. Ward (1928-1996); Bibliography of William A. Ward; The Absolute Date of the Montet Jar Scarabs (Daphna Ben-Tor); A Funerary Address to the High-priest Harmakhis (J.F. Borghouts); A coffin from Farshût in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Edward Brovarski); The Hieroglyphic Representation of the Moon's Absence (Psdntyw) (Leo Depuydt); Hurrian Incursions and the End of the Middle Bronze Age in Syria-Palestine: A Rejoinder to Nadav Na'aman (William G. Dever); The Social Setting of the Peoples of the Ancient Near East: An Assessment of Johannes Pedersen (1883-1977) (Ernest S. Frerichs); The Near East Background of the Rigveda (Cyrus H. Gordon); Representations of the Elserly in Ancient Mesopotamian Literature (Rivkah Harris); An Attic Red Figure Chous with Heroes in the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design (R. Ross Holloway); Re-Discovering Elephants at Petra! (Martha Sharp Joukowsky); Queen Khamerernebty II and Her Sculpture (Barbara S. Lesko); The Perception of Women in Pharaonic Egyptian Wisdom Literature (Leonard H. Lesko); A Much-Published Byblite Cylinder Seal (Geoffrey T. Martin); La Désignation juridique des femmes, d'après les documents contractuels et judiciaires de l'Égypte Ancienne (Bernadette Menu); The Levantine Branch of the von Heidenstam Family in the 19th Century A.D. (R.S. Merrillees); Phoenician Inscriptions from Beirut (Hélène Sader); William A. Ward and Beirut: Archaeological News from the Capital of his Choice (Helga Seeden); The Significance of Anointing in Ancient Egyptian Funerary Beliefs (Stephen F. Thompson); Bronzes in the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago (Rolf Winkes).

These studies on the history, art, religions, and literature of Egypt and the ancient Near East include discussions of previously unpublished archaeological excavations and ancient inscriptions. Some essays engage specific literary texts; others are comparative, interpreting the finds, art, and inscriptions, from a variety of ancient societies.

Major scholars in North America, Europe, and the Middle East provide a variety of fresh studies on the history, literature, religion, and art of Egypt, Israel, Phoenicia, and the rest of the ancient Mediterranean world. The first part of the book features chapters on ancient Egyptian inscriptions, art, history, and religion. The second part deals with biblical studies, the histories of ancient Israel, Canaan, and the relations among societies in the ancient Near East. The periods covered in the volume range from Old Kingdom Egypt to the late antique era. Most of the art historical and archaeological essays on ancient Egypt, Israel, and Canaan deal with previously unpublished finds. Many of the essays dealing with literary and historical issues explore the relations among ancient cultures, explaining the development of and interest in international trade, warfare, and travel. The book is amply illustrated with photos, drawings, graphs, and tables. "Egypt, Israel, and the Ancient Mediterranean World is a rich and wide-ranging collection of papers that well honors the distinguished scholar to whom it was dedicated. It also has much to offer all scholars interested in political and cultural interactions in the ancient eastern Mediterranean basin." Stanley M. Burstein, California State University, Los Angeles

Publisher description

Egypt, Greece and Rome is regarded as one of the best general histories of the ancient world. It is written for the general reader and the student coming to the subject for the first time and provides a reliable and highly accessible point of entry to the period. The volume begins with the early civilizations of Sumer (modern Iraq) and continues through to the Islamic invasions and the birth of modern Europe after the collapse of the western Roman empire. The book ranges beyond political history to cover philosophy, art and literature. A wide range of maps, illustrations and photographs complements the text. The second edition incorporates new chapters on the ancient Mediterranean and the Ancient Near East, as well as extended coverage of Egypt.

Comparative insights on astronomy, divination, and medicine from ancient texts Scientific Traditions in the Ancient Mediterranean and Near East presents a collection of articles by leading scholars on scientific practices in the ancient world, with emphasis on the fields of medicine, astronomy, astrology, and other forms of divination. The essays engage with a wide variety of textual sources in many different languages and scripts from Egypt and the Near East spanning more than a millennium, including some texts that are edited and discussed here for the first time. The contributors to this volume were tasked with approaching their texts not only as specialists, but also from a cross-cultural perspective, and the resulting body of work reveals new and exciting evidence for the transfer of scientific knowledge across cultural borders in the ancient Mediterranean and Near East. This book will be of interest primarily to specialists in the history of medicine, science, divination, and magic, as well as to papyrologists, Egyptologists, and Assyriologists.

Selected by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title In From Slave to Pharaoh, noted Egyptologist Donald B. Redford examines over two millennia of complex social and cultural interactions between Egypt and the Nubian and Sudanese civilizations that lay to the south of Egypt. These interactions resulted in the expulsion of the black Kushite pharaohs of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty in 671 B.C. by an invading Assyrian army. Redford traces the development of Egyptian perceptions of race as their dominance over the darker-skinned peoples of Nubia and the Sudan grew, exploring the cultural construction of spatial and spiritual boundaries between Egypt and other African peoples. Redford focuses on the role of racial identity in the formulation of imperial power in Egypt and the legitimization of its sphere of influence, and he highlights the dichotomy between the Egyptians' treatment of the black Africans it deemed enemies and of those living within Egyptian society. He also describes the range of responses—from resistance to assimilation—of subjugated Nubians and Sudanese to their loss of self-determination. Indeed, by the time of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty, the culture of the Kushite kings who conquered Egypt in the late eighth century B.C. was thoroughly Egyptian itself. Moving beyond recent debates between Afrocentrists and their critics over the racial characteristics of Egyptian civilization, From Slave to Pharaoh reveals the true complexity of race, identity, and power in Egypt as documented through surviving texts and artifacts, while at the same time providing a compelling account of war, conquest, and culture in the ancient world.