Czech Institute of Egyptology – förlag

The volume contains 27 chapters focusing on the social developments and cultural aspects of contacts in Prehistory, Antiquity and the Middle Ages, extending into the modern era.

This study of individual Egyptian queens is based on an earlier study, The Wives of the Egyptian Kings, Dynasties I-XVII, which was a doctoral dissertation ny this author presented at Macquaire University in 1992. This book differs from the first in many ways because we now understand much more abou these royal women.

This book is intended as a commented summary of some of the major trends and most important features that can be encountered when analysing ancient Egyptian society of the Old Kingdom. We have to bear in mind that around 3000 BCE one of the first centralised states in our recorded history rose, and the Old Kingdom represents certainly one of its apogees. Moreover, there is hardly any comparable society that left behind such a wealth of archaeological and literary evidence, a welcome companion for our journey back in time. The goal for writing this book was to outline general trends in the history of the non-royal tomb development of the period. The reason is rather simple and straightforward: ancient Egyptians considered the tomb to be their afterlife residence for eternity. In the afterlife they replicated the life they experienced during the lifetime. Thus the tomb architecture, decoration, inscriptions and equipment paradoxically represent a major tool for our understanding of the everyday life of the ancient Egyptians and enable a better comprehension of the development and dynamics of the Old Kingdom. The book is divided into nine chapters covering, step by step, the development of the Egyptian tomb and society from the Predynastic Period to the end of the first six Egyptian dynasties, a lengthy period of time which covers the Early Dynastic and the Old Kingdom periods. These six chapters are accompanied by three additional chapters on religious aspects of the Old Kingdom society, its economy and environment.

The book presents selected aspects of the legacy that ancient Egypt left on the culture of Coptic, Islamic and modern Egypt. Ancient origin can be traced in numerous different sources and thus the papers in the volume approach the subject from different perspectives. Many connections can be found in the Egyptian traditions in general, as well as in certain specific practices. Inspiration by the ancient times is also very apparent in literature and art.

The present publication is concerned with the rock art from two sections of the Nile Valley in Lower Nubia surveyed in the scope of the UNESCO-organised salvage campaign by the Czechoslovak Institute of Egyptology (Charles University in Prague). It has two main objects, first to complete the catalogue of the rock art documented or localised in the two sections of the Czechoslovak concession with hitherto unpublished rock-art surfaces and occurrences (both petroglyphs and rock paintings) and, second, to provide a critical revision of the data published in Katalog der Felsbilder aus der Tschechoslowakischen Konzession in Nubien (edited by F. Váhala and P. Červíček, Prag 1999). With a view to presenting the results of the critical revision, made on the basis of the field documentation gathered by the Czechoslovak expedition and deposited in the archive of the Czech Institute of Egyptology (Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague), all rock-art data – both unpublished and published – are arranged in the present volume in a tabular form. Tables 1–4 containing the description and revision of the rock-art data from the two sections of the Czechoslovak concession in a succession from north to south and, as distinct from Katalog, separately for each bank of the Nile, are accompanied by introductory notes on the formation of the corpus, hitherto unpublished distribution maps of the completed and revised corpus, 155 hitherto unpublished black-and-white photographs, and four colour plates with the sheets of the colour scale used for the recording of patina difference or colour value of preserved paints. With the two objects accomplished, the present publication constitutes a kind of manual to the rock-art corpus from the Czechoslovak concession in Lower Nubia and is to be regarded, together with Katalog, as the complete and authoritative source of data for evaluation of the significance of the evidence from the two sections of the Nile Valley in Lower Nubia.

The book includes contributions of the following authors: Hartwig Altenmüller, Ladislav Bareš, Miroslav Bárta, Andreas Effland, Martin Fitzenreiter, Hans Goedicke, Peter Jánosi, Dieter Kurth, Christian Loeben, Juan Carlos Moreno García, Jana Mynářová, Anthony Spalinger, Miroslav Verner, Hana Vymazalová, Wolfgang Waitkus.

The volume presents proceedings of the second international conference dedited to the study of relations between Egypt, the Aegean, the Levant and the Sudan in the 2nd and 1st millenia BCE.

27 authors-friends of Anthony Spalinger contributed to the Studies in Honour of hiis 70th Feast of Thoth.

Sun temples of the Fifth Dynasty are an unparalleled monument of ancient Egypt, characterized the Central part of the Old Kingdom considered as the apex of the solar cult and theology.Original architectural shape and ideological influence on the later phases of Egyptian history are far from clear as well as their cultic, ideological and symbolic relationship with the contemporary pyramids and with what is considered to be the original place of rise and diffusion of the solar cult in AE, the city of Heliopolis. Six temples were built in a quite limited time span in the middle of the Third Millennium BC but only two have been discovered so far. The volume collects all the available archaeological and textual evidences, including an in-depth reconstruction of the original decoration of temples.