In their wide-ranging interpretation of the religion of ancient Egypt, Francoise Dunand and Christiane Zivie-Coche explore how, over a period of roughly 3500 years, the Egyptians conceptualized their relations with the gods. Drawing on the insights of anthropology, the authors discuss such topics as the identities, images, and functions of the gods; rituals and liturgies; personal forms of piety expressing humanity's need to establish a direct relation with the divine; and the afterlife, a central feature of Egyptian religion. That religion, the authors assert, was characterized by the...
In their wide-ranging interpretation of the religion of ancient Egypt, Francoise Dunand and Christiane Zivie-Coche explore how, over a period of rough...
Cleopatra: kohl and vipers, barges and thrones, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. We have long been schooled in the myth of the Egyptian ruler. In his new book Michel Chauveau brings us a picture of her firmly based in reality. Cleopatra VII...
Cleopatra: kohl and vipers, barges and thrones, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. We have long been schooled in the myth of the Egyptian ruler. In ...
"Sphinxes are legion in Egypt what is so special about this one? . . . We shall take a stroll around the monument itself, scrutinizing its special features and analyzing the changes it experienced throughout its history. The evidence linked to the statue will enable us to trace its evolution . . . down to the worship it received in the first centuries of our own era, when Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans mingled together in devotion to this colossus, illustrious witness to a past that was already more than two millennia old." from the IntroductionThe Great Sphinx of Giza is one of the few...
"Sphinxes are legion in Egypt what is so special about this one? . . . We shall take a stroll around the monument itself, scrutinizing its special fea...
"Perhaps Hermeticism has fascinated so many people precisely because it has made it possible to produce many analogies and relationships to various traditions: to Platonism in its many varieties, to Stoicism, to Gnostic ideas, and even to certain Aristotelian doctrines. The Gnostic, the esoteric, the Platonist, or the deist has each been able to find something familiar in the writings. One just had to have a penchant for remote antiquity, for the idea of a Golden Age, in order for Hermeticism, with its aura of an ancient Egyptian revelation, to have enjoyed such outstanding success." from...
"Perhaps Hermeticism has fascinated so many people precisely because it has made it possible to produce many analogies and relationships to various...
Are dreams merely odd things that happen to us at night, sometimes pleasant, sometimes terrifying, but not to be taken too seriously? Is there any reason to think about them at all, other than in terms of questions such as 'Why should Aunt Sarah turn into a bird and invite us all to dinner in her sycamore tree?"
In this witty and eminently readable book, Bert O. States rethinks both the meaning of dreams and the relationship between dreaming and the telling of stories. Dreams constitute a private literature of the self, he says, that despite their seeming lack of order or structure...
Are dreams merely odd things that happen to us at night, sometimes pleasant, sometimes terrifying, but not to be taken too seriously? Is there any ...
How well do we really know ancient Egypt? The world of the Egyptians seems strangely familiar to us: exhibitions of ancient art and archaeological discoveries in the desert sands continue to generate interest and amazement, while Egyptian motifs appear in architecture, literature, artworks, advertising, and film. Yet, this modern reception can sometimes preserve the myths and inaccuracies about ancient Egypt that derive from classical antiquity and the Renaissance. It is only in the past two hundred years that we have been able to read for ourselves ancient Egyptian texts and to reveal the...
How well do we really know ancient Egypt? The world of the Egyptians seems strangely familiar to us: exhibitions of ancient art and archaeological ...
"Human beings," the acclaimed Egyptologist Jan Assmann writes, "are the animals that have to live with the knowledge of their death, and culture is the world they create so they can live with that knowledge." In his new book, Assmann explores images of death and of death rites in ancient Egypt to provide startling new insights into the particular character of the civilization as a whole.
Drawing on the unfamiliar genre of the death liturgy, he arrives at a remarkably comprehensive view of the religion of death in ancient Egypt. Assmann describes in detail nine different images of...
"Human beings," the acclaimed Egyptologist Jan Assmann writes, "are the animals that have to live with the knowledge of their death, and culture is...
