The Osireion At Abydos Volume 9

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This volume of collected studies takes stock of most recent developments in Egyptology and the Digital Humanities, considering future directions for the application of new technologies in Egyptology. The book presents the results of an international conference held in 2019 at Indiana University – Bloomington, in which Egyptologists and digital humanists with interest in Egyptology gathered in 2019 to present current projects in 3D modeling, virtual and augmented reality, game technology, digital pedagogy, database projects, computational and corpus linguistics and E-publications. Those projects, along with a selection of others that were not presented in Bloomington, are now described and discussed in this volume.

Of all the enormous monuments throughout Egypt and Nubia that Ramesses II (the Great; ca. 1279-1212 BCE) left behind, his temple at Abydos, built early in his reign, stands as one of his most elegant, with its simple architectural layout and dramatic and graceful painted relief scenes. Though best known for its dramatic reliefs depicting the battle of Kadesh, the temple also offers a wealth of information about religious and social life in ancient Egypt. It reflects, for example, the strenuous efforts of the early Ramessides to reestablish the Osiris cult in Egypt-and particularly at Abydos-in the aftermath of the Amarna period. Building on the comprehensive photographic and epigraphic documentation of the temple presented in The Temple of Ramesses II at Abydos volumes 1 (Wall Scenes) and 2 (Pillars, Niches, and Miscellanea), volume 3 (Architectural and Inscriptional Features) offers a detailed analysis of the overall architectural layout and decorative program of the temple and its symbolism. This discussion approaches the religious history of the site through its archaeology, its inscriptions-both planned and secondary (graffiti)-and its situation in the complex religious landscape of Abydos. Of particular interest are the temple's role as a staging point for the great Osiris Festival and its procession, among the most important of all ritual events in the Egyptian religious calendar during the Ramesside period; the promotion of an active, unbound form of Osiris; and the evidence for important cult activities that took place on the rooftop of the temple, the presence of which is documented today by the staircase that accessed it from Court B.

The final chapter in the definitive, three-volume history of the world's first known state Archaeologist John Romer has spent a lifetime chronicling the history of Ancient Egypt, and here he tells the epic story of an era dominated by titans of the popular imagination: the radical iconoclast Akhenaten, the boy-king Tutankhamun and the all-conquering Ramesses II. But 'heroes' do not forge history by themselves. This was also a time of international trade, cultural exchange and sophisticated art, even in the face of violent change. Alongside his visionary new history of this, the most famous period in the long history of Ancient Egypt, Romer turns a critical eye on Egyptology itself. Paying close attention to the evidence, he corrects prevailing narratives which cast the New Kingdom as an imperial state power in the European mould. Instead, he reveals - through broken artefacts in ruined workshops, or preserved letters between a tomb-builder and his son - a culture more beautiful and beguiling than we could have imagined. Romer carefully reconstructs the real story of the New Kingdom as evidenced in the archaeological record, and the result - the final volume of a life long project - secures his status as Ancient Egypt's finest chronicler.

The discovery of ancient Egypt and the development of Egyptology are momentous events in intellectual and cultural history. The history of Egyptology is the story of the people, famous and obscure, who constructed the picture of ancient Egypt that we have today, recovered the Egyptian past while inventing it anew, and made a lost civilization comprehensible to generations of enchanted readers and viewers thousands of years later. This, the third of a three-volume history of Egyptology, follows the progress of the discipline from the trauma of the First World War, through the vicissitudes of the twentieth century, and into Egyptology's new horizons at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Wonderful Things affirms that the history of ancient Egypt has proved continually fascinating, but it also demonstrates that the history of Egyptology is no less so. Only by understanding how Egyptology has developed can we truly understand the Egyptian past.

Mysteries associated with ancient Egypt are not confined to the pyramids of Giza. For example, consider these: One Egyptian hieroglyph is patterned after a bird known as the jabiru; another is an image of a saguaro cactus. Both the jabiru and the saguaro are found only in the Western Hemisphere, so how did they become hieroglyphs? Tutankhamen is referred to as the boy-king by Egyptologists. Why then were statues found in the tomb portraits of a young woman? Hatshepsut is said to have been a female pharaoh who reigned for 22 years but then disappeared from the scene. What happened to her? And why was her image expunged from the walls of temples? Senenmut, a favorite of Hatshepsut, wrote that he had access to all the writings of the prophets. Which prophets did he mean? Why does the face of the mummy of Ramesses II not match the statues of this great pharaoh? Also, why did the embalmers remove the stomach and place the heart on the right side of the thorax? And why were diced tobacco leaves from the Western Hemisphere used to line the chest cavity? Why was Yuya, supposedly the father of the great Queen Tiy, buried with three coffins while his wife had only two? Moreover, why did the mask that covered his face, along with the face on the innermost coffin, look totally different from the mummy and from each other? Death masks were found not just in Egypt but in Greece as well. The most famous of these came from grave # 5 at Mycenae. Each eye of this gold mask has double eyelids. In addition, like the Sphinx at Giza and the Shroud of Turin, the left eye is higher than the right and the mouth is not centered. How can such similarities be explained? Turning to Italy, on the underside of the right wrist of the Prima Porta statue of Augustus there is the distinct impression of the head of a spike. According to historians this statue depicts the first emperor of Rome, but what if it is instead a portrait of a man who was crucified? These mysteries, along with many others, are examined in detail and then convincingly explained in this first of two volumes to explore crucial links between Egypt, Israel, Greece and Italy.

The volume is the first of two complementary volumes that explore Abydos through the lenses of the latest archaeological, archival and collections research, building upon a colloquium and workshop held at the British Museum in 2015. Volume 2 presents a focussed view on Abydos in the post-pharaonic period. Chosen as the burial ground for the first kings of Egypt, Abydos became a site of great antiquity, and its ancient sanctity may have conferred legitimacy on the individuals buried there. The site soon became the cult centre for Egypt's most popular god, Osiris, who ruled the netherworld and guaranteed every Egyptian eternal life after death. As a result of continued ritual performance, endowments and pilgrimage, a vast landscape of chapels and tombs, temples and towns, developed. For millennia, Abydos was one of the most consecrated sites of Egypt. The contributions in this volume will address the social and cultural dynamics of an ever-changing landscape serving this unique ritual narrative.