Yale Egyptological Studies – serie

Hibis Temple, tucked away in the remote Khargeh Oasis, contains the longest monumental hymns to Amun-Re ever carved in hieroglyphs. These religious texts, inscribed during the reign of Darius I, drew upon a large variety of New Kingdom sources, and later they served as sources for the Graeco-Roman hymns at Esna Temple. As such, the hymns to Amun-Re from Hibis are excellently suited for studying Egyptian theology during the Persian Period, on the eve of the supposed "new theology" created by the Graeco-Roman priesthood. This new study, the first extensive commentary on the five liturgically connected hymns, features new translations with detailed notes. The book also considers dominant theological themes present in the texts, including the concept of "Amun within the Iris."

This is the first complete translation and commentary on the important tableau and inscription of Queen Katimala/Karimala at Semna. Proper understanding of the paleography, grammar and content reveals Katimala to have been a Nubian ruler at the time of the Twenty-First to Twenty-Second Dynasties of Ancient Egypt. She emerges as a political and military leader who took control of at least Lower Nubia in the wake of failed military activities on the part of a male predecessor. Katimala's inscription is not illegible, as has often been stated, but is a well-composed Lower Nubian example of a politico-religious manifesto applying many of the conventions of early Egyptian literary and historical compositions.

This new study is the first translation of the papyrus of Padikakem, with an extensive commentary. The complete early Ptolemaic manuscript from the Walters Art Museum contains two uncommon texts in hieratic. The initial text, a Ritual of Introducing the Multitude on the Last Day of Tekh, is identified as a temple liturgy by its rubric title, while its themes recall love poetry and the Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys. The second text, a rarely attested Book III of glorification spells (sakhw) has an exclusively mortuary character. The spells of this section largely originate in the Pyramid Texts and include specific instructions for recitation by the lector priest. The two texts are established as a coherent composition that belongs to the Greco-Roman tradition of merging Egyptian funerary practices with temple liturgies. The diverse sources and themes of the texts shed light on the evolution of Osirian and mortuary theologies from the Old Kingdom onwards. The study also thoroughly examines the development of grammar and paleography among the parallels.

This new study offers a comprehensive examination of a unique manuscript, a Late Period hieratic papyrus in the Brooklyn Museum. This document comprises a compilation of seventeen individual prophylactic texts whose anatomical focus is the ear. Many of the texts specifically state that they are intended for the protection of the ears of a king named Psamtik, a historical figure who ruled Egypt in the seventh century BCE. The fact that this papyrus was created to serve a sole purpose and function, the protection of the ear, distinguishes it noticeably from earlier Egyptian medical and magical texts that are largely encyclopedic and were intended to serve a broad range of purposes. The present study contains an introduction and full translation with extensive philological and textual commentary, as the texts of this papyrus are rich in mythological allusions. The commentaries are largely based on comparison with contemporary and older Egyptian texts that, although not direct parallels as there are none, serve nonetheless as a rich resource for comparative analysis that has led to a more informed reading of this important document. Includes 34 colour plates and 5 b/w tables.

This book focuses on the decorative schemes of several chapels in the earlier part of the Temple of Hibis, one of the most important temples from Late Period Egypt. The chapels studied here were either established and/or decorated during the first Persian Period (525-404 BCE). 45 b/w illustrations & 20 pages of colour plates. Ancient Egyptian temple walls expressed royal and political ideologies, reflected the ancient Egyptian secular and spiritual world order, supplied a medium for the reenactments of assorted myths, and implied a metaphor for the universe. Despite the conventional overall architecture plan of the Temple of Hibis, it exhibits numerous particularities and, while the more prominent parts of the temple, such as the sanctuary, have been studied by numerous scholars, in other areas the decoration schemes remain largely unexplained. The chapels studied in this book were located around the main sanctuary A, but have rarely been the subject of scholarly discussions. The book concentrates on chapels F and G to the south of sanctuary A on the first level of the temple and all the decorated chapels, E1, E2, H1, and H2, on the second level of the temple. Each chapter begins with a brief description of the scenes and their basic layout and a complete translation of the accompanying texts. A more in-depth analysis regarding both text and image follows in the commentary. It includes the analysis of the different aspects of the gods, their origins, and the development of their cults that are significant to the scenes and to each other. Also discussed are their coherence, any aspects that are especially emphasized, and any other information that could be gleaned from the whole scene. The analysis tries to detail the specific composition that makes up the mosaic of the picture, wall, or room. Attention is paid to both the scenic arrangement and the hieroglyphic inscriptions, as the interpretation of one would be meaningless without the other. Attention is given to investigating the general function of the different rooms by means of their decoration and by identifying the patterns or important themes generated by the layout of the scenes. The results are summarized in the last chapter. A number of line drawings have been inserted into the text beside a described scene as an aid to the reader.

Ritual Landscape and Performance contains the Egyptological contributions from a conference held at the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations of Yale University on September 23-24, 2016. The various articles discuss the use of ritual landscape from the Old to the New Kingdom of Ancient Egypt, by focusing on landscape archaeology of specific sites such as Saqqara, el-Bersheh, Abydos, Thebes, as well as Aniba in Nubia. Further contributions elucidate the interaction of desert and the Nile Valley through rock art, the depictions of watery environments in the delta and their association to rituals, as well as the habitation of landscapes using the example of southern Middle Egypt. Illustrated in colour and black & white.

This collected volume gathers articles stemming from the papers presented at the international and interdisciplinary conference Language, semantics and cognition. Saying and conceptualizing the world from Ancient Egypt to modern times, organized at Yale university (online) on April 16-18, 2021. It offers a glimpse at the current state of research in different fields intersecting with the study of the Egyptian language (lexical semantics, semantic typology, visual semiotics, metaphor studies, cognitive linguistics, classifiers studies) and addresses some main research questions for the future. It lays the foundations of a methodological road map for more effective interdisciplinary research. The studies included in this volume explore the link between the cognitive level (What are the conceptual categories in which the real is divided? How are they organized?) and the linguistic and written/visual level (How are these concepts expressed in the language/script?) through various themes. They allow for a comparison of the results obtained from different perspectives and approaches and for highlighting the differences and/or similarities that can be found cross-culturally and cross-linguistically, in pre-modern and modern languages. A major aim of the volume is to stress the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to the study of pre-modern languages and stress the importance of making data from these languages and their scripts accessible to scholars from other fields, in order to integrate them in a broader scientific dialogue.

Standing as a summary of Spalinger's ideas at the time of the Yale lectures in 2012, this study covers two research sides of modern Egyptological research by a life-long student of ancient Egyptian calendrics and the Egyptian military. The first three chapters cover the development of Richard Parker's seminal study from 1950 and move into the present stage of scholarship. Very important is the author's clarification of what Parker wrote in his paradigmatic work, a slim volume often misunderstood. Hence, the thrust of argument concentrates upon the dating of feasts, the names of the Egyptian months and their metamorphoses, in addition to the retention of lunar-based phenomena. Two final chapters turn to the military aspects of New Kingdom warfare, with emphasis placed upon Seti I and logistical arrangements.