Peter F. Dorman - Böcker

First published in 1988. In all past commentaries on Senenmut and his time, 1 the single most pervasive problem with which modem scholars--and no doubt even contemporary ancient Egyptians--have had the most difficulty in coming to terms is perhaps the fact of Hatshepsut's kingship. The motives for her accession, the extent of her power, the nature of her political support, the legacy of her rule, and the reasons for her proscription are all themes that derive from the monumental and chronological data that must form the basis of any evaluation of her reign. In the course of the past century, as an increasing number of monuments belonging to Senenmut have been discovered or newly identified, each one has understandably provided an opportunity for a reinterpretation of the career of this powerful courtier; yet each has also provided the chance for fresh commentary on Hatshepsut's kingship and her presumed rivals for the throne of Egypt.

First published in 1988. In all past commentaries on Senenmut and his time, 1 the single most pervasive problem with which modem scholars--and no doubt even contemporary ancient Egyptians--have had the most difficulty in coming to terms is perhaps the fact of Hatshepsut's kingship. The motives for her accession, the extent of her power, the nature of her political support, the legacy of her rule, and the reasons for her proscription are all themes that derive from the monumental and chronological data that must form the basis of any evaluation of her reign. In the course of the past century, as an increasing number of monuments belonging to Senenmut have been discovered or newly identified, each one has understandably provided an opportunity for a reinterpretation of the career of this powerful courtier; yet each has also provided the chance for fresh commentary on Hatshepsut's kingship and her presumed rivals for the throne of Egypt.

This volume publishes the proceedings of the Theban Symposium that took place in May 2010, in Granada, Spain, at the Institute for Arabic Studies of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), on the general theme of "Creativity and Innovation in the Reign of Hatshepsut." The volume contains nineteen papers that present new perspectives on the reign of Hatshepsut and the early New Kingdom. The authors address a range of topics, including the phenomenon of innovation, the Egyptian worldview, politics, state administration, women's issues and the use of gender, cult and rituals, mortuary practices, and architecture. Groundbreaking for the study of Hatshepsut's reign and the beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasty, this volume will become an important reference for scholars and lay readers interested in the history, culture, and archaeology of the time of Hatshepsut and the early New Kingdom.

The tombs and mortuary temples of Thebes have proved an enduring topic of interest thanks to a quickly expanding corpus of field materials and a series of conferences devoted to the subject. This volume, the fourth in a series of occasional proceedings from the ongoing Theban Workshop, presents new research on wall decoration in the Theban necropolis. Its thirteen essays, by an international array of leading scholars, attest to the wide and varied scope of the theme.

This volume presents a series of papers delivered at a two-day session of the Theban Workshop held at the British Museum in September 2003. Due to its political and religious prominence throughout much of pharaonic history, the region of ancient Thebes offers scholars a wealth of monuments whose physical remains and extant iconography may be combined with textual sources and archaeological finds in ways that elucidate the function of sacred space as initially conceived, and which also reveal adaptations to human need or shifts in cultural perception. The contributions herein address issues such as the architectural framing of religious ceremony, the implicit performative responses of officiants, the diachronic study of specific rites, the adaptation of sacred space to different uses through physical, representational, or textual alteration, and the development of ritual landscapes in ancient Thebes.