In the 9th century, a secret sect of the Ismā'īlīs -- known in the Middle Ages under the name of Fatimids -- arose to play a prominent role in the history of the Near East. Their supreme head today is the Agha Khan. In this mesmerising book, Heinz Halm describes the early history of the Fatimids, from the founding and spread of the secret society to the rise of the caliphal dynasty to power in North Africa and the founding of Cairo, their capital.

In the narrow sense this volume deals with Egyptian military activity in the southern Levant, about 1300 to 1185 B.C. In the broad sense it provides a case study for the integration of historical, archaeological, and anthropological perspectives.
Basing himself on a new comprehensive concordance of terms in Egyptian military accounts, the author starts with a contextual analysis of over thirty terms and clauses. With the Egyptian perception of events established, two chapters are devoted to the archaeological evidence for Egyptian presence, influence, and destruction at over forty site,...

This book is about epithets on Egyptian monumental inscriptions, and about the conclusions one may draw from them. Epithets in the first place characterize the owner of the text and encourage others to maintain his memorial cult. Though formulaic and not describing actual historical events, this thorough study points out that these epithets are in fact valuable indicators of religious, social and political attitudes. In the case of this volume, the author analyses the epithets of non-royal officials from the Middle Kingdom (c. 2040-1640 BCE). Drawing on evidence from several hundred...

The Egyptians made use of texts and art forms dating back to sometimes more than 1,000 years. Why did they do this, and how? This book is about the great value of traditions in Ancient Egypt. A case in point is the Egyptian settlement of Siut, where, during the First Intermediate Period and Middle Kingdom texts were recorded in tombs and on funerary equipment of high officials: mortuary liturgies, biographies, lists of decans, etcetera. Surprisingly, many hundreds, sometimes even more than a thousand years later these same texts reappear in other regions of Egypt, especially Thebes. Applying...

This volume, by offering a score of new insights derived from a wide variety of recent archaeological and textual sources, bring to life an important overseas trading port in Southeast Asia: Quanzhou. During the Song and Yuan dynasties active official and unofficial engagement in trade had formative effects on the development of the maritime trade of Quanzhou and its social and economic position both regionally and supraregionally. In the first part subjects such as the impact of the Song imperial clan and the local elites on these developments, the economic importance of metals, coins, paper...

The development of Kushite concepts of order in the state and the cosmos forms the focus of Laszlo Torok's latest volume. Taking a wide variety of textual and iconographical evidence as his points of departure, the author sheds light on the formation of, and interaction between basic concepts such as inhabited space, sacred space, sacred landscape, historical memory and political legitimacy. The author traces this development by discussing the royal and temple texts, urban architecture, the structure of temple iconography, and the relationship between the society and the temples as places of...

Major scholars in North America, Europe, and the Middle East provide a variety of fresh studies on the history, literature, religion, and art of Egypt, Israel, Phoenicia, and the rest of the ancient Mediterranean world. The first part of the book features chapters on ancient Egyptian inscriptions, art, history, and religion. The second part deals with biblical studies, the histories of ancient Israel, Canaan, and the relations among societies in the ancient Near East. The periods covered in the volume range from Old Kingdom Egypt to the late antique era. Most of the art historical and...

This book explores for the first time deviant behaviour in ancient Egyptian society and society's sanctions in response to it; theories derived from the field of anthropology and sociology of law are taken into consideration. Full use is made not only of juridical texts, but all varieties of textual and archaeological sources. All forms of deviant behaviour are described and classified primarily according to their target of the action. Then follows a discussion of all kinds of sanctions, both negative and positive. In general, the classification of crimes and punishments is based on different...

This volume traces the evolution of New Kingdom foreign policy in Syria-Palestine, Nubia, and Libya through an analysis of the distribution of Egyptian military bases over time and across borders. Archaeological and textual evidence pertaining to fortress-towns, forts, border checkpoints, and military headquarters is analyzed in order to illuminate the ever-shifting strategies employed by the Egyptian government to rule its subject territories. Exhaustive in its scope and illustrated throughout with numerous maps and architectural plans, this book should interest Egyptologists, Near Eastern...

This book deals with the architecture and visual arts in late antique-early Byzantine Egypt as an organic part of the art of the Mediterranean region in the period between the 3rd and 8th centuries. The richly illustrated book discusses the survival and transformations of Hellenistic themes and forms in the Roman and late antique periods. It also presents a history of Coptic art history. "Transfigurations of Hellenism is an outstanding addition to this scholarship, tracing out in detail the continuity of the Hellenistic tradition in Egyptian art...All scholars of late antiquity will...