This volume presents the findings of three seasons of excavation in the 1980s at Kom el-Hisn, "the mound of the fortress," in the northwest Nile Delta. This provincial community was often in the orbit of Memphis, the capital and administrative center of Egypt's Old Kingdom period. Small areas of occupations of the First Intermediate and early Middle Kingdom periods were also excavated. One of the goals of the excavations was to complement and compare the substantial ancient textual record of this era with Kom el-Hisn's archaeological record because such evidence is sparse for Lower Egypt between about 2500 and 1800 BC. The findings presented here reveal the complexity of small Old Kingdom settlements in the context of the Memphite state organization and shed light on the changing relationships of this administrative center with its provincial communities. Kom el-Hisn's faunal, floral, lithic, and architectural remains are presented and discussed in detail, as are some theoretical and methodological issues relevant to this research. With contributions by Paul E. Buck, Anthony J. Cagle, Michal Kobusiewicz, Karla Kroeper, Richard R. Redding, Sarah Sterling, Robert J. Wenke, Wilma Wetterstrom, Anna Wodzinska, and Alexandra Witsell.

In this book, the late Richard Redding synthesizes his decades-long work on the ancient agricultural economy of Egypt. Drawing on a diverse range of data, including zooarchaeology, ancient texts, and iconographic sources, he explores the role of cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs in the economic infrastructure of ancient, mainly Pharaonic, Egypt and the complexities of decision-making processes that shaped the use and management of these vital livestock resources. The book integrates zooarchaeological and historical data with information on unimproved breeds of cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs from Egypt and the broader Middle East as well as considers texts and tomb paintings. Redding argues that understanding the interplay between economic forces, environmental factors, and herders' knowledge of animal characteristics is crucial for unraveling the dynamic nature of decision-making. The author explores herd growth rates, meat yields, caloric and nutritional benefits, and optimal herd structures. By employing that data and ecological models, including the annual Nile floods, he provides insights into the adaptive strategies employed by ancient Egyptian herders. In this way, Redding examines the economic rationale behind ancient Egyptian herding communities. His models of Pharaonic herding strategies generate expectations tested using zooarchaeological evidence. Redding long advocated the modeling approach he demonstrates here, understanding zooarchaeological data through a lens of animal biology and environmental context. This work should therefore spark wide interest among archaeologists working in disparate regions.

In this book, Richard Bussmann presents a fresh overview of ancient Egyptian society and culture in the age of the pyramids. He addresses key themes in the comparative research of early complex societies, including urbanism, funerary culture, temple ritual, kingship, and the state, and explores how ideas and practices were exchanged between ruling elites and local communities in provincial Egypt. Unlike other studies of ancient Egypt, this book adopts an anthropological approach that places people at the centre of the analysis. Bussmann covers a range of important themes in cross-cultural debates, such as materiality, gender, non-elite culture, and the body. He also offers new perspectives on social diversity and cultural cohesion, based on recent discoveries. His study vividly illustrates how our understanding of ancient Egyptian society benefits from the application of theoretical concepts in archaeology and anthropology to the interpretation of the evidence.

This book situates discussions of Christian monasticism in Egypt and Palestine within the socio-economic world of the long Late Antiquity, from the golden age of monasticism into and well beyond the Arab conquest (fifth to tenth century). Its thirteen chapters present new research into the rich corpus of textual sources and archaeological remains and move beyond traditional studies that have treated monastic communities as religious entities in physical seclusion from society. The volume brings together scholars working across traditional boundaries of subject and geography and explores a diverse range of topics from the production of food and wine to networks of scribes, patronage, and monastic visitation. As such, it paints a vivid picture of busy monastic lives dependent on and led in tandem with the non-monastic world.

This groundbreaking, five-volume series offers a comprehensive, fully illustrated history of Egypt and Western Asia (the Levant, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and Iran), from the emergence of complex states to the conquest of Alexander the Great. Written by a diverse, international team of leading scholars whose expertise brings to life the people, places, and times of the remote past, the volumes in this series focus firmly on the political and social histories of the states and communities of the ancient Near East. Individual chapters present the key textual and material sources underpinning the historical reconstruction, paying particular attention to the most recent archaeological finds and their impact on our historical understanding of the periods surveyed. The second volume covers broadly the first half of the second millennium BC or in archaeological terms, the Middle Bronze Age. Eleven chapters present the history of the Near East, beginning with the First Intermediate Period and Middle Kingdom Egypt and the Mesopotamian kingdoms of Ur (Third Dynasty), Isin and Larsa. The complex mosaic of competing states that arose between the Eastern Mediterranean, the Anatolian highlands and the Zagros mountains of Iran are all treated, culminating in an examination of the kingdom of Babylon founded by Hammurabi and maintained by his successors. Beyond the narrative history of each region considered, the volume treats a wide range of critical topics, including the absolute chronology; state formation and disintegration; the role of kingship, cult practice and material culture in the creation and maintenance of social hierarchies; and long-distance trade-both terrestrial and maritime-as a vital factor in the creation of social, political and economic networks that bridged deserts, oceans, and mountain ranges, binding together the extraordinarily diverse peoples and polities of Sub-Saharan Africa, the Near East, and Central Asia.

This volume challenges assumptions about—and highlights new approaches to—the study of ancient Egyptian society by tackling various thematic social issues through structured individual case studies. The reader will be presented with questions about the relevance of the past in the present. The chapters encourage an understanding of Egypt in its own terms through the lens of power, people, and place, offering a more nuanced understanding of the way Egyptian society was organized and illustrating the benefits of new approaches to topics in need of a critical re-examination. By re-evaluating traditional, long-held beliefs about a monolithic, unchanging ancient Egyptian society, this volume writes a new narrative—one unchecked assumption at a time. Ancient Egyptian Society: Challenging Assumptions, Exploring Approaches is intended for anyone studying ancient Egypt or ancient societies more broadly, including undergraduate and graduate students, Egyptologists, and scholars in adjacent fields.

A stunningly illustrated atlas of the world’s rivers, estuaries, and deltas, and their ecosystems From the Congo and the Mekong to the Seine and the Mississippi, Earth’s rivers carve through landscapes before coursing into the world’s oceans through estuaries and deltas. Their inexorable flow carries sediment and more, acting as lifeblood for a variety of ecosystems and communities. More than any other surface feature of Earth, rivers, estuaries, and deltas are vitally important to our economic and social well-being, and our management of them often sits at the sharp edge of today’s most pressing environmental challenges. The World Atlas of Rivers, Estuaries, and Deltas takes readers on an unforgettable tour of these dynamic bodies of water, explaining how they function at each stage of their flow. Combining maps and graphics with informative essays and beautiful photos, this invaluable reference book will give you a new appreciation for the power that rivers, estuaries, and deltas wield. Features a wealth of color photos, maps, and infographics Brings together invaluable perspectives from leading experts Describes the rich biodiversity associated with the world’s rivers, estuaries, and deltas Explains how rivers, estuaries, and deltas work, from river networks to deltaic floodplains, and sheds light on the erosion, movement, and deposition of sediment Describes the anatomy of rivers, estuaries, and deltas, from channel geometry and river planforms to estuarine shape and delta morphology Examines the ecology and ecosystems of rivers, estuaries, and deltas and how humans interact with these environments Additional topics include damming, climate change, water use, pollution, resource management, and planetary health, as well as future perspectives on these vital landscapes