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This chapter examines the personal names of people in the garrison town of Hermoupolis Magna in Middle Egypt in the last quarter of the second century BC. It evaluates whether it is possible to determine where the soldiers of the garrison came from based on their names alone. The findings suggests that the absence of ethnics, along with the survival of rare Greek names, may reflect a long-term settlement in the area.

On coming to the throne of the Kingdom of the West, Psamtek began the process of reunifying Egypt. The Assyrians left in unidentified circumstances and Psamtek began to bolster his military forces by recruiting foreign mercenaries. Economically the fledgling Saite state was quite weak and Psamtek sought to improve his economic base by establishing trading relations, particularly with the Aegeans and the Phoenicians. He expanded his power throughout the Delta, seemingly by mainly diplomatic means. In Middle Egypt Psamtek strengthened his alliances with the major power, the rulers of the Herakleopolitan kingdom who eventually recognised him as king. In the south of the country he achieved his greatest success, with the adoption of his eldest daughter, princess Nitiqret, as heir to the powerful position of God’s Wife of Amun. In doing so he was able to return the Thebaid to Egyptian central royal authority. Within a period of about nine years Psamtek had imposed his will throughout Egypt but overall consolidation of his power and full re-integration of the state of Egypt was some time away.

Mesokemic (siglum: M) is a dialect of Coptic that was discovered relatively late. Paul E. Kahle was the first to describe its characteristics and distinguish M clearly from the other dialects of Upper Egypt and the Fayoum. The corpus of texts in Mesokemic then known to Kahle was very small, but comprised very early documents that shed light on the early development and usage of different dialectal varieties of Coptic for literary texts in the third and fourth centuries. Since then the corpus has grown substantially and there is now a comprehensive idea of Mesokemic's lexical and morphological features. This chapter provides a list of all the published biblical, literary, and documentary texts that are written in the Mesokemic, and discusses its morphophonological characteristics and geographical situation.

Al-Shaykh Saʻid (Middle Egypt) covers the southern part of the archaeological concession area of the Dayr al-Barsha Project, directed by Harco Willems. The site is named after the nearby tomb of a local saint. An ensemble of Old Kingdom tombs (end of Fifth Dynasty–beginning of Sixth Dynasty) was cut into the steep western cliff face of an outcrop between two wadis. Monumental tombs line the principal ridge, with a lower and a higher level of smaller tombs and shafts. This chapter explores the way that monks adapted the tombs of al-Shaykh Saʻid to a monastic community as well as the role of the wall in front of the cliffs. Was it part of the layout of the settlement or did it serve another purpose?

This chapter seeks to correct the common notion that the architectural design of the typical Coptic Orthodox church either has a cruciform plan or is in the form of Noah's Ark, which reflects a lack of awareness and lack of study of the rich and diverse Coptic architectural heritage throughout the ages. It focuses on the categorization of the historic churches of Middle Egypt, in the region from Oxyrhynchos to Dayr al-Ganadla. This categorization is based on the nave's formation and the roofing system, excluding cave and rock-cut churches. Basic architectural elements and one or more distinctive examples of each type are illustrated.

This chapter discusses the results of excavations at Bawit that were accomplished at the end of the 2012 season. The remains of the Bawit monastery, founded by Apa Apollo, are located near Dashlout, about twenty-five kilometers south of Hermopolis (today Ashmunayn). Apa Apollo's monastery was one of the most important monasteries of Middle Egypt and the site of Bawit has yielded the richest papyrological and epigraphical documentation in the region. Recent work has taken place in two sectors: in the northern and the central parts of the kom. At the northern sector a dwelling quarter has been discovered, and in the central part the North Church has been unearthed again. South of it, a new church, without a doubt the main church of the monastery, was discovered and has been in the process of being excavated since 2008. The South Church and the main basilica go back to the beginning of the seventh century; the latter features rebuilding until the beginning of the ninth century. The North Church was built at the end of the seventh century or the beginning of the eighth century. The pottery survey demonstrates that habitation of the site continued into the tenth and eleventh centuries.