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on the history, art, religions, and literature of Egypt and the ancient Near East include discussions of previously unpublished archaeological excavations and ancient inscriptions.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.

Publisher description

"Clock time", with all its benefits and anxieties, is often viewed as a "modern" phenomenon, but ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern cultures also had tools for marking and measuring time within the day and wrestled with challenges of daily time management. This book brings together for the first time perspectives on the interplay between short-term timekeeping technologies and their social contexts in ancient Egypt, Babylon, Greece, and Rome. Its contributions denaturalize modern-day concepts of clocks, hours, and temporal frameworks; describe some of the timekeeping solutions used in antiquity; and illuminate the diverse factors that affected how individuals and communities structured their time.

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

Historical and Archaeological Aspects of Egyptian Funerary Culture, a thoroughly reworked translation of Les textes des sarcophages et la démocratie published in 2008, challenges the widespread idea that the “royal” Pyramid Texts of the Old Kingdom after a process of “democratisation” became, in the Middle Kingdom, accessible even to the average Egyptian in the form of the Coffin Texts. Rather they remained an element of elite funerary culture, and particularly so in the Upper Egyptian nomes. The author traces the emergence here of the so-called “nomarchs” and their survival in the Middle Kingdom. The site of Dayr al-Barshā, currently under excavation, shows how nomarch cemeteries could even develop into large-scale processional landscapes intended for the cult of the local ruler. This book also provides an updated list of the hundreds of (mostly unpublished) Middle Kingdom coffins and proposes a new reference system for these.