Djekhy & Son, two businessmen living 2500 years ago in the densely populated neighborhoods built around the great temple of Amun at Karnak, worked as funerary service providers in the necropolis on the western bank of the Nile. They were also successful agricultural entrepreneurs, cultivating flax and grain. In 1885, the German Egyptologist August Eisenlohr acquired a unique collection of papyri that turned out to be Djekhy's archive of mainly legal documents. Using this rich trove of evidence, augmented by many other sources, the author has painted a vivid picture of life in ancient Egypt between 570 and 534

This book is the first ever edition of an abnormal hieratic business archive from the Louvre of a mortuary priest in 7th century BCE Thebes (Egypt), discussing points of history, law, economics, religion, grammar, chronology and abnormal hieratic palaeography.

Business Woman; Egypt; history.

The first economic history of ancient Egypt employing a New Institutional Economics approach and covering the entire pharaonic period, 3000-30 BCE.

This volume publishes, for the first time, approximately fifty late Egyptian texts from the Suzuki collection held at Tokai University, Japan. The project is a result of a five-year collaboration between Tokai University, Yale University, Johns Hopkins University, The University of Michigan, and the Staatliche Museum zu Berlin. Professor Suzuki formed his collection in the early 1960s when he was based in Cairo. The bulk of the collection, now housed in the Department of Asian Civilization, School of Letters at Tokai University as part of the Ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern Collection (AENET), consists of early demotic texts. There is also one Third Intermediate period hieratic text concerned with temple land, and a few small Greek fragments from the Byzantine period. The texts published here present an interesting range of document types and examples of demotic handwriting, and a few surprises. Among the more intriguing pieces are a fine word list and a new mythological narrative.

An intimate look at the true story of the funerary business of a Theban mortuary priest 2800 years ago as unearthed by an ancient papyrus Petebaste son of Peteamunip, the choachyte, or water-pourer, lived during the first half of the seventh century BCE in the reigns of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty Kushite kings Shabaka and Taharqa and was responsible for the comfortable and carefree afterlife of his deceased clients by bringing their weekly libations. But Petebaste was also responsible for a wide range of other activities—he provided a tomb to the family of the deceased, managed the costs of the personnel and commodities, and took care of all necessary paperwork, while also tending to the gruesome preparation of the mortal remains of the deceased. Drawing on an archive of eight abnormal hieratic papyri in the Louvre that deal specifically with the affairs of a single family, Donker van Heel takes a deep dive into the business dealings of this Theban mortuary priest. In intimate detail, he illuminates the final stage of the embalming and coffining process of a woman called Taperet (‘Mrs. Seedcorn’) on the night before she would be taken from the embalming workshop to her final resting place, providing fascinating insight into the practical day-to-day aspects of funerary practices in ancient Egypt.

This volume of proceedings contains 139 revised papers, originally given at the Seventh International Congress of Egyptologists in Cambridge, from 3rd-9th September 1995. They provide an overview of the range and agenda of Egyptological research in the 1

This book presents a new analysis of the organization, structure and changes of the pharaonic state through three millennia of its history. Moreno García sheds new light on this topic by bringing to bear recent developments in state theory and archaeology, especially comparative study of the structure of ancient states and empires. The role played by pharaonic Egypt in new studies often reiterates old views about the stability, conservatism and 'exceptionalism' of Egyptian kingship, which supposedly remained the same across the Bronze and Iron Ages. Ancient Egypt shared many parallels with other Bronze and Iron Age societies as can be shown by an analysis of the structure of the state, of the limits of royal power, of the authority of local but neglected micro-powers (such as provincial potentates and wealthy non-elite), and of the circulation and control of wealth. Furthermore, Egypt experienced deep changes in its social, economic, political and territorial organization during its history, thus making the land of the pharaohs an ideal arena in which to test applications of models of governments and to define the dynamics that rule societies on the longue durée. When seen through these new perspectives, the pharaonic monarchies appear less exceptional than previously thought, and more dependent on the balance of power, on their capacity to control the kingdom's resources and on the changing geopolitical conditions of their time.

Ancient Egyptian Administration provides the first comprehensive overview of the structure, organization and evolution of the pharaonic administration from its origins to the end of the Late Period. The book not only focuses on bureaucracy, departments, and official practices but also on more informal issues like patronage, the limits in the actual exercise of authority, and the competing interests between institutions and factions within the ruling elite. Furthermore, general chapters devoted to the best-documented periods in Egyptian history are supplemented by more detailed ones dealing with specific archives, regions, and administrative problems. The volume thus produced by an international team of leading scholars will be an indispensable, up-to-date, tool of research covering a much-neglected aspect of pharaonic civilization.

The Oxford Handbook of Egyptology offers a comprehensive survey of the entire study of ancient Egypt from prehistory through to the end of the Roman period. It seeks to place Egyptology within its theoretical, methodological, and historical contexts, indicating how the subject has evolved and discussing its distinctive contemporary problems, issues, and potential. Transcending conventional boundaries between archaeological and ancient textual analysis, the volume brings together 63 chapters that range widely across archaeological, philological, and cultural sub-disciplines, highlighting the extent to which Egyptology as a subject has diversified and stressing the need for it to seek multidisciplinary methods and broader collaborations if it is to remain contemporary and relevant. Organized into ten parts, it offers a comprehensive synthesis of the various sub-topics and specializations that make up the field as a whole, from the historical and geographical perspectives that have influenced its development and current characteristics, to aspects of museology and conservation, and from materials and technology - as evidenced in domestic architecture and religious and funerary items - to textual and iconographic approaches to Egyptian culture. Authoritative yet accessible, it serves not only as an invaluable reference work for scholars and students working within the discipline, but also as a gateway into Egyptology for classicists, archaeologists, anthropologists, sociologists, and linguists.