This volume presents a novel analysis of complement clauses in Earlier Egyptian language. The grammar of these constructions is shown to be organised around a system for expressing Irrealis and Realis modality.

The Egyptological literature usually belittles or ignores the political and intellectual initiative and success of the Nubian Twenty-Fifth Dynasty in the reunification of Egypt, while students of Nubian history frequently ignore or misunderstand the impact of Egyptian ideas on the cultural developments in pre- and post-Twenty-Fifth-Dynasty Nubia. This book re-assesses the textual and archaeological evidence concerning the interaction between Egypt and the polities emerging in Upper Nubia between the Late Neolithic period and 500 AD. The investigation is carried out, however, from the special...

Egyptian temples are commonly perceived as monumental buildings and royal institutions. However, this perception is true only for the temples of the later periods of dynastic Egypt. Using archaeological and inscriptional data this book explores the social history of the rarely studied local temples from Dynasty 0 to 11 (ca. 3000-2000 BC). A major focus is placed on the investigation of the temple votives, especially those from Hierakonpolis and Abydos. They are one of the most complex sources for the history of the temples between the provincial milieu and the kings. The book shows how these...

The ancient "Egyptian Pyramid Texts" form the oldest sizable body of religious texts in the world. Discovered in the late nineteenth century, they had been inscribed on the interior stone walls of the pyramid tombs of third-millennium kings and queens. From their content it is clear that they were concerned with the afterlife state of the tomb owner, but the historical meaning of their emergence has been poorly understood. This book weds traditional philological approaches to linguistic anthropology in order to associate them with two spheres of human action: mortuary cult and personal...