Joshua Aaron Roberson – författare

Illustrated in b/w with 109 figures, 69 plates and 9 tables. Collections of scenes and texts designated variously as the "Book of the Earth," "Creation of the Solar Disc," and "Book of Aker" were inscribed on the walls of royal sarcophagus chambers throughout Egypt's Ramessid period (Dynasties 19-20). This material illustrated discrete episodes from the nocturnal voyage of the sun god, which functioned as a model for the resurrection of the deceased king. These earliest "Books of the Earth" employed mostly ad hoc arrangements of scenes, united by shared elements of iconography, an overarching, bipartite symmetry of composition, and their frequent pairing with representations of the double sky overhead. From the Twenty-First Dynasty and later, selections of programmatic tableaux were adapted for use in private mortuary contexts, often in conjunction with innovative or previously unattested annotations. The present study collects and analyses all currently known Book of the Earth material, including discussions of iconography, grammar, orthography, and architectural setting.

This volume serves as a thorough and authoritative introduction to the "classical" phase of the ancient Egyptian language and its writing systems, known by convention as Middle Egyptian. It includes sixteen chapters with practice exercises, which offer detailed discussions of the conventional hieroglyphic script, syntax and grammar, as well as overviews of diachronic change, the hieratic script, and nonstandard hieroglyphic orthographies (so-called cryptography). In addition, the volume includes an answer key to the even-numbered exercises, as well as a series of appendices, featuring an extensive glossary of particles, numerous paradigmatic charts, and a robust sign list.