Among the numerous deities invested with special spheres of responsibility in ancient Egypt Mr.t is charged with the salutation of the deity (king or god) and the provision of cult-music. Since there is no lack of source material relating to the goddess from all periods right down to Roman times, Mr.t readily provides an exemplary demonstration of a minor deity's transformation through time. Her original deification must have taken place during the 4th and 5th dynasties when the chorus designated Mr.t came to be personified as the ritual figure "Mr.t upon the house...

The confrontation of the magisterial Worterbuch der Agyptischen Sprache (12 volumes, publ. 1926-1963) and the enormous possibilities for lexicography offered by modern techniques forms the subject of this new volume in Brill's monograph series Probleme der Agyptologie. It consists of papers offering of course an appreciation of the Worterbuch, but also thorough contributions highlighting specific lexicographical and linguistic problems, and the new approaches and concepts in these fields. New directions for (Egyptian) lexicography are appearing, profiting from, and...

In Foreigners and Egyptians in the Late Egyptian Stories Camilla Di Biase-Dyson applies systemic functional linguistics, literary theory and New Historicist approaches to four of the Late Egyptian Stories and shows how language was exploited to establish the narrative roles of literary protagonists. The analysis reveals the shifting power dynamics between the Doomed Prince and his foreign wife and the parody in the depiction of the Hyksos ruler Apophis and his Theban counterpart Seqenenre. It also sheds light on the weight of history in the sketch of the Rebel of Joppa and the...

The so-called Book of Two Ways is a long and complex composition containing both texts and images. It reached us on the insides of some coffins and tomb walls, principally from the Hermopolitan nome in the Egyptian Middle Kingdom (2055-1650 BC). Wael Sherbiny presents a pioneering study based on all the original and hitherto unpublished sources. Through Hermopolitan Lenses challenges many of the traditional views related to this composition as part of the Coffin Texts. It also provides an integrated pictorial and textual analysis revealing many unprecedented facts. The oldest and...

In Die Graberfelder von Sedment im Neuen Reich, Henning Franzmeier presents and reassesses the complete results of the previously only partially published excavations undertaken by W.M.F. Petrie and G. Brunton in the New Kingdom cemeteries of Sedment, Middle Egypt, from 1920 to 1921. Through his research, Franzmeier has expanded the corpus of known New Kingdom tombs at Sedment from about 50 to more than 250, including burials of high-ranking officials, and identified a wide range of previously unknown objects. Presenting the development of an important provincial cemetery, this...

Egyptologists have been debating for decades about whether or not Egyptian images classify as art. Nevertheless, the term 'art' still serves as a guiding concept for Egyptology. Kai Widmaier offers an overview of how different art-historical interpretive methods influence Egyptological research. His study demonstrates that, due to its adherence to the term art, Egyptology has considerably dissociated Egyptian images from their original contexts. Bilderwelten combines the analysis of Egyptian images from the 6th to the 18th Dynasty with methodological reflection. This...

In Bilder fur den Pharao Shih-Wei HSU offers a thorough study of figurative expressions in ancient Egyptian texts, placing particular emphasis on royal inscriptions. This book is divided into three chapters. Chapter one consists of an introduction to the study of figurative language, examining the definition of this construct and discussing the differences between similes and metaphors in ancient Egyptian. Chapter two provides an overview of usage, function and purpose of figurative language in the different text genres. Chapter three contains the research and analysis of the...