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Taking Fishbane's groundbreaking methodological work in biblical mythology, this chapter explores the possibility of applying these insights to a range of non-Israelite historical and mythological texts. It argues that such a thing as the narrative representation of the past is anything but normal and self-evident. It requires a general cultural option for change over against identity and continuity. The past, in order to become the subject of such a representation, must in itself possess a kind of narrative structure.

Should Egypt be exhibited as part of the ancient Near East? This chapter considers the museological place of objects that cannot currently be accommodated in either the Egyptian or ancient Near Eastern canons. First, the chapter broadly defines the traits shared by objects in the Egyptian art canon and argues that museum displays have been primarily responsible for its formation. Then a selection of exhibitions that have incorporated Egyptian material with that of the Near East and traditional African art are considered in order to demonstrate the benefits of an international approach to display. The conclusion is that, as a powerful technology of knowledge production, a curatorial vision that integrates cross-cultural and international strategies into the display of permanent collections would encourage a broadening of the types of objects included in regional and global canons.

This chapter details the administrative functions, religious symbolisms, and other such historic intricacies of the Egyptian monarchy. At the pinnacle of Egyptian society sat the king. Below him were the layers of the educated bureaucracy, comprising nobles, priests, and civil servants, and under them the great mass of the people, largely living an agricultural life. The ancient Egyptian monarchy lasted in a recognizable form for over three thousand years. Although many changes occurred during that time, almost all of the fundamentals remained in being. The chapter also notes the difficulties of current historical sources for vocalizations and chronologies for the monarchical information since reconstructed.

This chapter describes the individuals who studied aspects of health status or disease among ancient Egyptians and Nubians. It emphasizes the key developments in the formative years of Nile Valley paleopathology up to the UNESCO High Dam campaign initiated in 1960. Mummies figured prominently in the unraveling of this history.

This chapter serves as a brief overview of Egyptian society. It describes the significance of the land, agriculture, and religion to the Egyptian way of life; and more importantly how Egypt as we know it today has been tied up with the Nile sustaining the ancient Egyptian population amid a vast desert inhabited solely by nomads. As agriculture was the principal occupation of the ancient Egyptian population, the chapter shows how the inner workings of the state and the schedules of the general population were reliant on the Nile's inundation cycles. Another significant part of ancient Egyptian life was its religion which, like Islam, was likewise bound up in in a way of life, making it very difficult to separate out the sacred and the profane. In addition to these, the chapter also briefly explores Egypt's state institutions, administrative divisions of land, and population demographics.

This chapter considers the adventure stories of H. Rider Haggard, which helped set the pattern for fiction combining geographical with archaeological discovery. His three best-known novels—King Solomon's Mines (1885), She (1887), and Allan Quatermain (1887)—feature British heroes discovering the remnants of ancient civilizations in southeastern Africa. It is argued that Haggard's racism and his fetishistic archaeology led him to insist that Great Zimbabwe and other ruins in southeastern Africa could only have been constructed by a civilized, white, or at least Semitic race. He saw the ancient Egyptians as a great civilizing race; he also saw the Zulus as a great savage race, and imagined that they would always remain savage. Though well aware of the theory of evolution, Haggard treats both savage and civilized races as if they were permanent fixtures, eternal certitudes that helped him believe in the permanency of British civilization and its empire.

The author of this chapter made a decision to study the animal mummy collection, and initiated the Animal Mummy Project, in cooperation with the Supreme Council of Antiquities and the Egyptian Museum, with Nasry Iskander being the designated collaborator from the latter institution. This project was one of the first modern, large-scale, non-destructive studies of animal mummies of all species undertaken anywhere in the world. The chapter's author's primary interest lay in studying the process of mummification when applied to animals, to see if chronological and geographical changes/particularities could be mapped, to understand the different categories of animal mummies, and to learn more about the ancient Egyptian environment. The ultimate aim of this project, after the mummies had been examined, was to conserve them, to produce a new, updated Catalogue Général volume as the original one had been rendered obsolete, as well as to reinstall the mummies in a more sympathetic museum environment.

With the way open for examination of Egypt, numerous Western scholars and travelers appeared on the Nile during the 1820s and 1830s to study and record the remains of ancient Egypt. Foremost was John Gardner Wilkinson who went on to write his immensely influential Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians. Edward William Lane, later famous for his work about the modern Middle East, devoted himself extensively to Egyptology in his early years. The wealthy Scot Robert Hay organized expeditions to record the monuments. From France there was Jean-Jacques Rifaud. Much of their work remained in manuscript, but it became an important resource for Egyptologists in later years. The consular collectors continued and expanded their operations. The largest Egyptological effort during this time was the Franco-Tuscan Expedition, led by Jean François Champollion and Ipollito Rosellini.

This chapter explores the Book of the Dead as it began to preoccupy Victorian writers and thinkers in the late nineteenth century. It argues that, as the traditions of Victorian Protestantism became less secure and authoritative, many commentators began to look to other traditions to explore ideas about the soul and the afterlife, either to challenge Christian ideas or to bolster them. Taking in the "time-travel theme parks" that were Victorian cemeteries, through unfulfilled architectural plans to build a pyramid on Primrose Hill in London, through scholarship and popular accounts of the Book of the Dead, this chapter reveals how the so-called Victorian "cult of death" was itself long dead before 1914 (the date at which it is often said to have expired), and unspools the ways in which mid-Victorian uncertainty about evangelical notions of the afterlife fueled a popular passion for all things Egyptian in the later decades of the century.

Societies do not simply live in a physical environment. At least as important, if not more so, is the way in which they conceptualize that environment to make it comprehensible and tractable, which is the focus of this chapter. It discusses the Egyptian conceptualizations of the physical structure of the universe, time, and the inhabitants of the cosmos.

Amongst all the ‘sacred animals’ that were mummified and buried in vast quantities by the ancient Egyptians during the last centuries of their long history, cats held a special place and were accorded a special respect. However, uninformed people misunderstand the true state of affairs in ancient Egypt with regard to animal worship. They believe that in ancient Egypt all cats were worshiped, mummified, and interred, as were dogs, both the favored animals of the Egyptians par excellence. Moreover, cats were put into a separate category from dogs as they were regarded as “special” and mysterious animals, almost divine, beloved and feared at the same time. But this attitude is a projection of a modern point of view that has its roots in the Middle Ages, and one that is above all occidental and anachronistic.

This chapter examines how the ancient Egyptians efficiently exploited their physical environment to meet their economic requirements, extracting the maximum benefit from it and circumventing whatever deficiencies it presented. It discusses nutritional resources; acquisition of raw materials; the institutional infrastructure for production and distribution; and the communication network.

This chapter details the first few generations of rulers under the Nineteenth Dynasty, beginning with Rameses I, his son Sethy I, and grandson Rameses II. Notably, the latter would embark on a reign that was to last sixty-seven years, the longest properly documented period of rule known from Egyptian history. The reigns of these three rulers were characterized by military activity—fitting, given how the dynastic founder, Ramses I (then the General Paramessu) had come from a military background, and had indeed been a colleague of Horemheb while the latter was still serving as army commander. Also a hallmark of this period was its artistic output, particularly during the reign of Sethy I.

John of Lykopolis (310/320–394/395) was a seer and prophet who lived as an ascetic and recluse in a cave in the western mountain of Asyut (Greek: Lykopolis). Many people consulted him, including Emperor Theodosius who trusted in John to foretell his future. This chapter describes new archaeological discoveries that found the famous three cells that literary sources claim were used by St. John of Lykopolis. As a result of the identification of Tombs II, III, and IV as the hermitage of St. John, a cross-cultural continuity in relation to the veneration of saints becomes evident: the owners of Tombs III and IV (or possibly of the neighboring Tomb V), Iti-ibi and Khety, were venerated as saints in the second millennium BC. Their tomb inscriptions formed part of the cultural memory of ancient Egypt as late as the second century AD, as findings of papyri in Tebtynis in the Fayoum attest. The tombs with their function as memorial sites for ancient Egyptian saints also served as memorial sites for a Christian saint, and the fact that Dayr al-Meitin was constructed in close vicinity to Tombs II, III, and IV in the fifth century AD, that is, immediately after the death of St. John, is unlikely to be a coincidence.

This chapter discusses cosmogony and theogony, or the origin of time and gods, as imagined by early cultures. It explores the perception of time in a variety of cultures, ranging from prehistoric times to the present. The discussion ranges over the Stone Age, the Mesopotamians, the Middle East, the Europeans, the Central Americans, the Australian Aboriginals, and the Far East. The Julian and Gregorian calendars are reviewed. Specific attention is given to the significance of time in various religions including Ancient Egyptian, Mithraism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The Mayan calendar and its focus on mathematical cycles is discussed in some detail.

This chapter explores the Fifth and Sixth dynasties, which seem to have been periods of fairly extensive state-sponsored foreign enterprises, both peaceful and otherwise. A feature of the activities of Fifth Dynasty kings is their building of a sun temple, as well as a pyramid; the former comprised a bulky obelisk, a chapel, and a causeway. The latter part of the Old Kingdom is moreover characterized by the increase in the number and quality of the tombs built at provincial centers by local dignitaries, in particular by the nome governors, or nomarchs. Amid this backdrop the chapter focuses on the reigns of Sahure and the other succeeding Fifth Dynasty kings, as well as the start of the Sixth Dynasty, with a focus on Pepy I and his son (and grandson) Pepy II.