Egyptology

This conference undertakes a comparative exploration of archival agency in ancient and medieval societies, drawing on the expertise of scholars of different periods and regions of the Mediterranean and the Middle East. The goal is to examine the dynamics and effects of archives, both at the level of institutions and administration, and in the domains of documentary culture and knowledge production. Papers will consider institutional aspects (such as record–keeping procedures and strategies of information management) as well as theoretical and cultural dimensions of archiving (e.g. archives as an epistemic infrastructure or as reflecting a particular administrative ideology) while focusing specifically on questions of agency: how does the conception and configuration of archives, the work archives are intended to perform and practical manifestations thereof, affect and shape behavior, ideas, norms, and power dynamics in a given society or administrative system? In other words: how and why did ancient and medieval archives matter?

A further goal of the conference will be a critical examination of scholarly notions of the premodern, revisiting traditional classifications of administrative systems based on their (in)capacity to store and wield information, and reconsidering what have been theorized as the hallmarks of the modern state.

A complete storage jar with a hieratic inscription was uncovered at Tel Azekah, providing new evidence for Egyptian administrative activity in the Southern Levant at the very end of the Late Bronze Age. The jar was found in a destruction layer dated to the second half of the 12th century BCE and thus represents the latest securely dated hieratic text
from the region. The inscription, written in ink on the shoulder of the jar, was part of a title, possibly referring to an official in charge of tax collection. The results from the
petrographic analysis indicate that the jar originated from neighbouring Tell es.-S.afi/Gath. The findings display the ongoing presence of Egyptian-trained personnel in the Shephelah and the importance of Tel Azekah and its elite in the imperial administrative system.

The honoree of this volume has investigated the many literatures, secular
and religious, recovered from the archives of the Hittite capital Hattuša.
Notably, by investigating the Hattic textual remains of Anatolia, he has
reconstructed the substrate, if one can use this word in a limited fashion,
of Hittite culture. However, he has also devoted his attention to the study
of the transmission and reception of Hurrian and Mesopotamian literatures
in Hattuša. In this article, we will turn to the most famous of all literary
compositions of the Near East – the Epic of Gilgameš – in recognition of
Soysal’s contributions to the decipherment, identification, and analysis of
the fragments of the Epic and related materials found in Hattuša

The Petrified Forest Protected Area, known locally as Gebel El-Khashab, on the southeastern fringe of Cairo, is officially described as an Oligocene fossil wood locality with minor marine incursions from the Miocene. This classification, while scientifically accurate, may be prematurely reductive. This reflective article does not present new empirical data. Instead, it examines what has not been asked about this landscape. Drawing on published geophysical surveys, urban encroachment records, and a critical reading of Egyptological priorities, the author argues that the deep subsurface of the Cairo Petrified Forest, below ten metres, remains functionally unknown. Furthermore, the article suggests, purely speculatively and without evidence, that the region may hold answers to larger questions about the environmental memory of the Nile Valley, the deep prehistory of the Eastern Desert, and the relationship between long vanished ecosystems and the civilisation that later arose a few kilometres away. The tone is deliberately provocative yet rigorous. It is a call for intellectual courage, not for certainty.

Аннотация. Представлены результаты анализа текстильных материалов и керамических пряслиц, обнаруженных в женском захоронении саргатской культуры в Среднем Прииртышье (погребение 4 кургана 1 могильника Новопокровка-IV). Авторы вводят в научный оборот находки, которые для лесостепных памятников Зауралья и Западной Сибири относятся к категории редких,-это шелк и шерсть. В ходе исследований установлены технологические особенности образцов-шерстяная ткань полотняного переплетения и шелковая плетеная сетка. Изученные фрагменты могут относиться к одному изделию, представлявшему собой некий головной убор с сеткой для волос. Пряслица изготовлены из стенок гончарной керамики; их края подправлены абразивом. Выявленные следы на внутренней поверхности сквозного отверстия одного из пряслиц-линейные, носят технологический характер и связаны со сверлением отверстия. Внутри канала второго предмета отсутствуют следы сверления, но отмечается выровненность, сглаженность и уплотнение поверхности, что позволяет допустить его использование в качестве насада. Концентрические изделия с отверстием посредине, выполненные из разных материалов различными способами, судя по форме, в большинстве случаев являются маховиками или насадами, нанизанными на ось небольших предметов. В археологической литературе такие находки именуются пряслицами, что не только ведет к однозначной трактовке о принадлежности к ткачеству и прядению, но и к рассмотрению в категории полодиагностирующих предметов в составе сопроводительного инвентаря женских захоронений. Не оспаривая в целом существующие атрибуцию и назначение пряслиц, авторы обсуждают их во взаимосвязи с находками текстиля, что существенным образом дополняет имеющиеся представления о разных аспектах жизнедеятельности полукочевого населения лесостепи Западной Сибири в раннем железном веке.

L’ouvrage est consacré aux discours tardo-antiques sur la présence divine, en particulier dans les traditions platoniciennes et chrétiennes. Il examine les théories, images et pratiques liées à la présence du divin, depuis Plotin jusqu’aux développements ultérieurs du néoplatonisme, ainsi que leurs transformations dans les contextes chrétiens de l’Antiquité tardive.

Table des matières : 

1. Introduction: Presence in Late Antique Platonism, Pagan and Christian
  Ilinca Tanaseanu-Döbler, Luciana Gabriela Soares Santoprete et Benedetto Neola

2. La poétique du divin : Homère et Platon selon le traité anonyme Du sublime
  Anca Vasiliu

3. The Divine and Human Nature of Christ in Origen’s Contra Celsum
  Marco Zambon

4. Plotinus on Δύναμις Πάντων: The Power of All or a Power for All
  Svetla Slaveva-Griffin

5. Absent de tout lieu, présent partout : le Principe Premier selon le Traité 32 (V, 5), 8, 23 – 9 de Plotin
  Luciana Gabriela Soares Santoprete

6. Porphyry and Presence
  Ilinca Tanaseanu-Döbler

7. Divine Presence and Doctrine of the Soul in Later Neoplatonism
  Benedetto Neola

8. Mythes télestiques et théurgie dans le Contre Héracleios de l’empereur Julien
  Dominique Côté

9. Divine Omnipresence in the Late Neoplatonic Tradition: The Theological Explanation of the Entanglement Between Metaphysical Order and Cosmic Harmony
  Michele Abbate

10. Presence of Gods and Presence of the One in Proclus
    Ilinca Tanaseanu-Döbler

11. The Divine Presence of the Gods: The Function of the Henads in Proclus’ Elementatio Theologica and Theologia Platonica
    Jörg von Alvensleben

12. Contemplative Path: Rediscovering Unity with the Divine in the Human Realm
    Clelia Attanasio

13. The Immanence of God in the World: From the Apologists to Maximus the Confessor
    Claudio Moreschini

Bu makaleyle Karaman tarihiyle ilgili bugüne kadar pek bilinmeyen bazı bilgiler vermeye çalışacağım. Ünlü Kıral Yolu,
Karaman’dan geçtiği için ordular ve seyyahlar, Karaman’a çok sık uğramışlardır. MÖ 585’deki harp anında Güneş tutulmasıyla
meşhur olan Medya-Lidya harbi ile MÖ 547’de Kyros ile Kroisos [Karun] arasındaki Medya- Lidya harbi Karaman bölgesinde
vukûbulmuştur. MÖ 401’de Oğul Kyros, MÖ 333’de İskender ve İmruü’l-Kays, Karaman’dan geçmişlerdir. Emevî ve Abbasî
ordularının Uc, Ammûriye ve İstanbul seferleri ile Hıristiyanların Kudüs yolu, Müslümanların Hac yolu, hep ve daima
Karaman’dan geçmektedir. Kıral Yolu Hititler zamanında bile kullanılmıştır. Roma, Bizans ve İslâm orduları bu yolu kullanarak
doğuya ve batıya seferler düzenlemişlerdir. Ol bakımından Karaman, farklı adlarla da olsa kendinden hep bahsettirmiştir.

THE COURSE IN DESIGN AND ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS AT EL AIINIA UNIVERSITY, EGYPT: YEAR I.
This course focuses on ancient examples of art and includes careful study by students of decorative arts, traditional local arts and international sources of influence on Egyptian an heritage. Typically, this last part of the first-year course involves the study of Akkadian, Assyrian and Byzantine art, and also of European art from Greece to the 20th century.
An important aspect of this course is to encourage the development of a cultural identity. Given the presence of a cosmopolitan modern culture reflecting the dominant values of Western European and American society, art and design students in a country like Egypt are confronted apparently with the unenviable choice between following cultural models based elsewhere or local practices which may receive no critical validation. The only healthy solution is to develop a sense of cultural identity based on studying art and design traditions within that area of the world while at the same time feeling able to draw on aspects of that cosmopolitan modern culture when this is felt appropriate.
Thus the first year at El Minia University involves art and design students in practical study of ancient Egyptian art through an approach similar to copying. They reproduce traditional ways of designing and producing artworks (using, for example, black lead drawing, wash and pen drawing and water colour). They also learn how to adapt traditional subject matter or content, and use traditional rules or conventions of proportion and colour, for example.
The course goes on to involve students in comparing different kinds of ancient art (Egyptian, Coptic, Moslem etc.), both decorative techniques and construction of objects. Finally, they make their own works of art (a practical project) in a modern idiom in some field of decorative or commercial art and engage in evaluation and criticism of each other's work.
This booklet is intended to take British teachers and students through this process of early study of ancient examples of Egyptian art. Careful and detailed analyses of illustrations of five paintings by El Minia students are provided followed by some contextual information on ancient Egyptian painting. The last part comprises an introduction to the work of a contemporary artist, Dr. Hamdi Abd Allah whose work clearly incorporates features from both ancient Egyptian art and modern art practice. Thus, his art can sent as an exemplar for the blend of study of past practice and development of personal expression necessary for the production of genuine cultural identity in the modern world.

The Museum of Lies as subproject to the Cyfarthfa Castle Museum Project (shared between the University of Wales Trinity Saint David and Cyfarthfa Castle Museum and Art Gallery, Merthyr Tydfil) collects fictional stories inspired by Egyptological artefacts. It aims to appraise unprovenanced objects by using alternative, creative and artistic narratives (word, image, art, dance) in addition to and beyond scholarly description allowing the literal and cultural (re-)discovery of artifacts completely devoid of their archaeological provenance. In connecting the objects with (new) contexts, they are brought back to life and out of the storerooms by being connected with audiences at the intersection of tangible and intangible heritage.
Artists, poets, craftsmen, dancers and pupils are creating said narratives which are revealed together with the objects and their academic descriptions in annual pop-up exhibitions. Fitting with the cyclical (re-)use of objects in ancient Egypt, this traces their trail through time and space from the moment of first production and consequent usage in Egypt over being picked up by travellers, being misplaced and rediscovered in Wales. At every stage a layer of new context and interpretation was added, revealing their identity giving multidimensionality.

Contemporary debates regarding the ethnic and racial identity of ancient Egyptian civilization frequently conflate two analytically distinct variables: phenotypic appearance and symbolic-civilizational identity. This paper argues, using the Deep Symbolic Systems Model (DSSM) as its analytical framework, that phenotypic similarity is a function of geographic proximity and ultraviolet radiation gradients, while civilizational identity is a function of symbolic load-operationalized through the two-dimensional Field Companion Protocol (FCP) scoring instrument. The Nile Valley presents a continuous biological cline from the Mediterranean Delta southward through Upper Egypt, Nubia, and the Horn of Africa. Genomic data from ancient Egyptian mummies (Schuenemann et al., 2017; Nature, 2025) establish that Old Kingdom Egyptians were genetically rooted in North African Neolithic and West Asian ancestry, with negligible sub-Saharan African component. Upper Egyptians-the geographic and symbolic origin point of the pharaonic tradition-carried higher Nilotic ancestry relative to Lower Egyptians, producing darker phenotypes consistent with their higher UV latitude. This gradient confirms, rather than destabilizes, the DSSM argument: the builders of the monuments were Upper Egyptian, their phenotype reflects their latitude, and their symbolic load-12/12 FCP at Old Kingdom-is categorically distinct from the Kushite derivative case (6/12 FCP). The Nubian pyramid tradition, built 600-1,800 years after the Egyptian originals, confirms the directionality of symbolic transfer: Egypt to Kush, not the reverse. A comparative test-the Greek-Italian phenotypic overlapformalizes the negative case: populations may share facial morphology while generating entirely independent civilizational trajectories, invalidating any inference from phenotype to civilizational identity. The paper concludes that phenotype is geography; civilization is symbolic infrastructure; and the two are not the same variable.

This manuscript reports the first complete journal-style draft of an ongoing geometric investigation of multi-epoch stellar alignment models for the Great Pyramid of Khufu. The analysis asks whether the observed internal-axis geometry admits a coherent chronology when stellar targets, precessional motion, and a parameterized true-polar-wander (TPW) geometry are searched jointly. It does not assume that the resulting chronology is historically true, and it does not treat the numerical minima as archaeological proof. In the current run, the observed best axis is 31 • E, with a primary compatibility corridor from 28 • E to 34 • E and an orthogonal corridor from 112 • E to 133 • E. The chronology-constrained sequence associated with the primary corridor places the Subterranean, Queen's, and King's chamber-related alignments near 42.8 ka BCE, 8.45 ka BCE, and 5.7 ka BCE respectively. A chronology-unconstrained run instead clusters the three assignments near 42.8, 46.1, and 45.8 ka. The current observed score is 0.3288, with raw χ = 0.2663 and event χ = 0.3804. The plane-elevation jitter conditional null is now complete at 250 realizations. Within this null family, the observed score lies at the 55.6 lower-tail percentile and the observed event-χ lies at the 10.8 lower-tail percentile. These results do not support a claim of score exceptionality; they indicate only that the observed event coherence is lower than most, but not all, elevation-jitter null realizations. Additional null families remain underway. The main observation is narrower: within a specific TPW-axis corridor, the geometry admits a coherent chronology, and that chronology emerges repeatedly under the present scoring rules. The interpretation remains open.

The Eighteenth Dynasty Egyptian Pharaoh, Hatshepsut (c. 1473-1458 BCE), has attracted a great deal of attention for doing gender wrong, at least according to modern scholarship (Figure ). She began her career as the regent for her step-son/nephew, Thutmose III, and then at some point within the first seven years, she ascended the throne as co-regent. 1 Hatshepsut's public gender identity fails to conform to our norms of cultural intelligibility, but the fact that this gender transformation occurred over the course of two decades indicates that it was a persistent and intentional gender 'identity' for Hatshepsut. 2 Hatshepsut was not making claims about who she was as a private person, but instead she was subscribing to the gendered expectations of rulership. This public identity has appeared to modern Egyptologists as gender incongruity, but I will argue that Hatshepsut's public representations were intelligible to ancient Egyptians and even a deliberate attempt to appeal to their sensibilities and provide them with solace in her rule. A study of Hatshepsut promises to contribute to our current understanding of gender in that it reframes our typical assumptions of ancient/traditional gender constructions and provides a model we can use to move forward with our own modern discourse about gender fluidity. For Egyptologists, this study elucidates the societal and historical factors that were complicit in keeping Hatshepsut in power. The existence of hermaphroditic creator deities, the composite nature of kingship, post-mortem gender fluidity and the rules of compositional decorum all intertwined to naturalise Hatshepsut's female masculinity and her ascension to the throne of Egypt. Hatshepsut was not the anomaly that we think she was. There were several other leaders in the New Kingdom who displayed non-binary gender identities, such as Queen Tiye, Akhenaten, Nefertiti and Tawosret. 3 Hatshepsut was only one example in an era of transgressors, who willingly played with composite imagery. The earliest elements added to her person were a masculine crown and the traditional title of male Egyptian king. Subsequently, she depicted herself in increasingly masculine poses, holding symbols reserved for male kings, in male dress and with male physiognomy. It was her unique position as King's Daughter, King's Wife and later Pharaoh that made her female masculinity more ubiquitous and therefore more discernible. Hatshepsut exemplified the virile woman who broke the bond between masculinity and the male body. In ancient Egypt, masculinity embodied the qualities that were culturally ascribed