Excerpt from Meroe, the City of the Ethiopians: Being an Account of a First Season's Excavations on the Site, 1909-1910 This is shown by the common pottery of early times, in which the complete absence of Egyptian influence is at once important and surprising. It is, therefore, both possible and desirable to publish without delay such results as have been obtained, postponing a fuller discussion of the culture and history until more extensive excavation has supplemented these materials. Such history of the Ethiopians as may be gleaned from ancient literature or based on our new evidence is treated in the Introductory Chapter by Professor Sayce, who also contributes an account of the decipherment of the Meroitic hieroglyphs, incorporating his own conclusions derived with characteristic rapid insight from his comparative study of texts in the pyramids of Meroe, at Naga, and elsewhere, with those newly found. The Meroitic texts as a whole, however, are discussed at our joint invitation by Mr. F. Ll. Griffith, who saw some of the inscriptions during a visit to the excavations, and re-studied those which were movable during the exhibition held in London. His contribution, in the last chapter of the volume, as well as his copies of the texts, which fill fourteen plates of illustrations, will command the attention of scholars both as an example of method and from the definite results which he has established. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Several distinct cemeteries lie east of the ancient city of Meroe, located in the north of the modern state of Sudan. The distribution of burials and differences in grave styles, ranging from simple pit burials to pyramid capped tombs, as well as the variety of artifacts accompanying the burials, represent complex patterns from which chronological and socioeconomic inferences can be derived.Four cemeteries were partially excavated in 1910 by john Garstang of the Institute of Arachaeology. The account by Prof. Garstang here given of his work on the site during the winter of 1909-10 is good and clear, and abundantly illustrated by plans and admirable photographs by Herr Schilephack. Color illustrations are reproduced in color.The most valuable section of the work is a treatment of the Meroltic inscriptions discovered by Griffith, in which the progress he is making in the decipherment of the lost tongue is evident. Large Quarto. HardcoverBook viii, 94 p. LXXIV pl. (incl. front., plans, partly fold.) Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1911

The cultures of Nubia built the earliest cities, states, and empires of inner Africa, but they remain relatively poorly known outside their modern descendants and the community of archaeologists, historians, and art historians researching them. The earliest archaeological work in Nubia was motivated by the region's role as neighbor, trade partner, and enemy of ancient Egypt. Increasingly, however, ancient Nile-based Nubian cultures are recognized in their own right as the earliest complex societies in inner Africa. As agro-pastoral cultures, Nubian settlement, economy, political organization, and religious ideologies were often organized differently from those of the urban, bureaucratic, and predominantly agricultural states of Egypt and the ancient Near East. Nubian societies are thus of great interest in comparative study, and are also recognized for their broader impact on the histories of the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East. The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia brings together chapters by an international group of scholars on a wide variety of topics that relate to the history and archaeology of the region. After important introductory chapters on the history of research in Nubia and on its climate and physical environment, the largest part of the volume focuses on the sequence of cultures that lead almost to the present day. Several cross-cutting themes are woven through these chapters, including essays on desert cultures and on Nubians in Egypt. Eleven final chapters synthesize subjects across all historical phases, including gender and the body, economy and trade, landscape archaeology, iron working, and stone quarrying.