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Few works about the Middle East have exerted such wide and long-lasting influence as Edward William Lane’s An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians. First published in 1836, this classic book has never gone out of print, continuously providing material and inspiration for generations of scholars, writers, and travelers, who have praised its comprehensiveness, detail, and perception. Yet the editions in print during most of the twentieth century would not have met Lane’s approval. Lacking parts of Lane’s text and many of his original illustrations (while adding many that were not his), they were based on what should have been ephemeral editions, published long after the author’s death. Meanwhile, the definitive fifth edition of 1860, the result of a quarter century of Lane’s corrections, reconsiderations, and additions, long ago disappeared from bookstore shelves. Now the 1860 edition of Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians is available again, with a useful general introduction by Jason Thompson. Lane’s greatest work enters the twenty-first century in precisely the form that he wanted.

During the half-millennium from the eleventh through the sixth centuries BC, the power and the glory of the imperial pharaohs of the New Kingdom crumbled in the face of internal crises and external pressures, ultimately reversed by invaders from Nubia and consolidated by natives of the Nile Delta following a series of Assyrian invasions. Much of this era remains obscure, with little consensus among Egyptologists. Against this background, the author reconsiders the evidence and proposes a number of new solutions to the problems of the period. He also considers the art, architecture, and archaeology of the period, including the royal tombs of Tanis, one of which yielded the intact burials of no fewer than five pharaohs. The book is extensively illustrated with images of this material, much of which is little known to non-specialists of the period. An examination (evidenced on monuments and inscriptions) of how the many kings of this period should be fitted into the dynastic structure listed by Manetho. By the author of the bestselling Amarna Sunset and Poisoned Legacy.

Some of the most fascinating sculptures to have survived from ancient Egypt are the colossal statues of Akhenaten, erected at the beginning of his reign in his new temple to the Aten at Karnak. Fragments of more than thirty statues are now known, showing the paradoxical features combining male and female, young and aged, characteristic of representations of this king. Did he look like this in real life? Or was his iconography skillfully devised to mirror his concept of his role in the universe? This book presents the history of the discovery of the statue fragments from 1925 to the present day; the profusion of opinions on the appearance of the king and his alleged medical conditions; and the various suggestions for an interpretation of the perplexing evidence. A complete catalog of all major fragments is included, as well as many pictures not previously published.

This study, drawing on the latest research, tells the story of the decline and fall of the pharaoh Akhenaten's religious revolution in the fourteenth century BC. Beginning at the regime's high-point in his Year 12, it traces the subsequent collapse that saw the deaths of many of the king's loved ones, his attempts to guarantee the revolution through co-rulers, and the last frenzied assault on the god Amun. The book then outlines the events of the subsequent five decades that saw the extinction of the royal line, an attempt to place a foreigner on Egypt's throne, and the accession of three army officers in turn. Among its conclusions are that the mother of Tutankhamun was none other than Nefertiti, and that the queen was joint-pharaoh in turn with both her husband Akhenaten and her son. As such, she was herself instrumental in beginning the return to orthodoxy, undoing her erstwhile husband's life-work before her own mysterious disappearance.

This book combines economic, ideological, and aesthetic narrative history with thought-provoking analysis. It provides an overview of cinema in the Arab world, tracing the industry's development from colonial times to the present. It analyzes the ambiguous relationship with commercial western cinema, and the effect of Egypt's market dominance in the region. Tracing the influence on the medium of local and regional art forms and modes of thought, both classical and popular, the book shows how indigenous and external factors combine in a dynamic process of cultural repackaging. This text has been updated to reflect cultural shifts in the last ten years of cinema. The book has a strong focus on Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine. While exploring problematic issues such as European co-production for Arab art films, including their relation to cultural identity and their reception in the region and abroad, this edition introduces readers to some of the most compelling cinematic works of the last decade.

This book presents an up-to-date study on Youssef Chahine's work. The methodological approach of the book, and more precisely the discussion of the theme of Arab national unity from a post-colonial point of view, emphasizes the ideological underpinnings of this Egyptian director's themes as well as his esthetics. The book focuses on the interaction between Chahine's personal and political preoccupations, his eclectic cinematic style, and his devotion to connecting with a wide audience of filmgoers.

This book provides a critical review of Arab women writers from the last quarter of the nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth century. This study—first published in Arabic in 2004—looks at the work of pioneers and then traces the development of Arab women's literature through the end of the twentieth century, and also includes a researched, comprehensive bibliography of writing by Arab women. In the first section nine chapters that cover the Arab Middle East from Morocco to Iraq and Syria to Yemen examine the origin and evolution of women's writing in each country in the region, addressing fiction, poetry, drama, and autobiographical writing. The second part of the volume contains bibliographical entries for over 1,200 Arab women writers from the last third of the nineteenth century through 1999. Each entry contains a short biography and a bibliography of each author's published works. This section also includes Arab women's writing in French and English, as well as a bibliography of works translated into English.

This book offers an unique window onto the social history of Cairo in the eighteenth century. Yuhanna al-Armani has long been known by historians of Coptic art as an eighteenth-century Armenian icon painter who lived and worked in Ottoman Cairo. Here for the first time is an account of his life that looks beyond his artistic production to place him firmly in the social, political, and economic milieu in which he moved and the confluence of interests that allowed him to flourish as a painter. Who was Yuhanna al-Armani? What was his network of relationships? How does this shed light on the contacts between Cairo's Coptic and Armenian communities in the eighteenth century? Why was there so much demand for his work at that particular time? And how did a member of Cairo's then relatively modest Armenian community reach such heights of artistic and creative endeavor? Drawing on eighteenth-century deeds relating to al-Armani and other members of his social network recorded in the registers of the Ottoman courts, this book offers a fascinating glimpse into the ways of life of urban dwellers in eighteenth-century Ottoman Cairo, at a time when a civilian elite had reached a high level of prominence and wealth. Al-Armani's life and career tell us much about the immediate world to which he belonged and about the wider context of the Ottoman Empire, which constituted a vast trading area under a single juridical whole.

This book presents a history of Old Cairo based on new archaeological evidence gathered between 2000 and 2006 during a major project to lower the groundwater level affecting the churches and monuments of this area of Cairo known by the Romans as Babylon. Examination of the material and structural remains revealed a sequence of continuous occupation extending from the sixth century BC to the present day. These include the massive stone walls of the canal linking the Nile to the Red Sea, and the harbor constructed by Trajan at its entrance around 110 AD. The Emperor Diocletian built the fortress of Babylon around the harbor and the canal in 300 AD, and much new information has come to light concerning the construction and internal layout of the fortress, which continues to enclose and define the enclave of Old Cairo. Important evidence for the early medieval transformation of the area into the nucleus of the Arab city of al-Fustat and its later medieval development is also presented.

The main objective of this book is to explore the dynamics of the bazaar within a broad socio-spatial and political perspective by investigating a number of case studies from North Africa to the Middle East. It includes papers on different facets of the bazaar from historical, architectural, sociological, and anthropological perspectives. The Middle Eastern bazaar is much more than a context for commerce: the studies in this book illustrate that markets, regardless of their location, scale, and permanency, have also played important cultural roles within their societies, reflecting historical evolution, industrial development, social and political conditions, urban morphology, and architectural functions. This interdisciplinary volume explores the dynamics of the bazaar with a number of case studies from Cairo, Damascus, Aleppo, Nablus, Bursa, Istanbul, Sana'a, Kabul, Tehran, and Yazd. Although they share some contextual and functional characteristics, each bazaar has its own unique and fascinating history, traditions, cultural practices, and structure. One of the most intriguing aspects revealed in this volume is the thread of continuity from past to present exhibited by the bazaar as a forum where a society meets and intermingles in the practice of goods exchange—a social and cultural ritual that is as old as human history.

Street children—abandoned or runaway children living on their own—can be found in cities all over the world, and their numbers are growing despite numerous international programs aimed at helping them. All too frequently, these children are viewed solely as victims or deviants to be rescued and rehabilitated. This book draws on eight years of fieldwork with street children in Cairo to portray them in a much different—and empowering—light. The book argues that, far from being mere victims or deviants, these children, in running away from alienating home lives and finding relative freedom in the street, are capable of actively defining their situations in their own terms. They are able to challenge the roles assigned to children, make judgments, and develop a network of niches and resources in a teeming metropolis such as Cairo. It is suggested that social workers and others need to respect the agency the children display in changing their own lives. In addition to collective advocacy with and on behalf of street children, social workers should empower them by encouraging their voluntary participation in non-formal educational activities.

One night in the year 411/1021, the powerful ruler of Fatimid Cairo, al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, rode out of the southern gates of his city and was never seen again. Was the caliph murdered, or could he have decided to abandon his royal life, wandering off to live alone and anonymous? Whatever the truth, the fact was that al-Hakim had literally vanished into the desert. Yet al-Hakim, though shrouded in mystery, has never been forgotten. To the Druze, he was (and is) God, and his disappearance merely indicated his reversion to non-human form. For Ismailis, al-Hakim was the sixteenth imam, descended from the Prophet, and infallible. Jews and Christians, by contrast, long remembered him as their persecutor, who ordered the destruction of many of their synagogues and churches. This book presents a biography of this fascinating individual.

Using the life and writings of Cyril III Ibn Laqlaq, 75th patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church, along with a variety of Christian and Muslim chroniclers, this study explores the identity and context of the Christian community of Egypt and its relations with the leadership of the Ayyubid dynasty in the early thirteenth century. The book introduces new scholarship that illuminates the varied relationships between medieval Christians of Egypt and their Muslim neighbors. Demonstrating that the Coptic community was neither passive nor static, the book discusses the active role played by the Copts in the formation and evolution of their own identity within the wider political and societal context of this period. In particular, it examines the boundaries between Copts and the wider Egyptian society in the Ayyubid period in three “in-between spaces”: patriarchal authority, religious conversion, and monasticism.

The Creswell photographic archive at the American University in Cairo is an invaluable resource of over 12,000 printed images of Islamic architecture, mainly in Cairo, but also including buildings in other important cities such as Córdoba and Baghdad. Creswell's own photographs constitute the majority of the collection, but he also assembled work by photographers active in the decades before he began his systematic recording in the 1920s. The AUC archive is unique because it includes the work of other photographers as well as Creswell images unavailable elsewhere, some recording buildings that no longer exist. This volume of collected studies seeks to highlight the value of this collection for scholars, who can examine the visual evidence of architecture now destroyed or altered in order to better understand various aspects of these significant buildings. Chapters discuss such issues as epigraphy in domestic and religious architecture, employing early photographs as guides for modern restoration, and military architecture.

This text here contains a hitherto unpublished work by the great nineteenth-century British traveler Edward William Lane (1801–76), a name known to almost everyone in all the many fields of Middle East studies. Lane was the author of a number of highly influential works: An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (1836), his translation of The Thousand and One Nights (1839–41), selections from the Kur-an (1843), and the Arabic–English Lexicon (1863–93). Yet one of his greatest works was never published: after years of labor and despite an enthusiastic reception by the publishing firm of John Murray in 1831, publication of his first book, this book, was delayed and eventually dropped, mainly for financial reasons. The manuscript was sold to the British Library by Lane's widow in 1891, and has only now been salvaged for publication by Dr. Jason Thompson, nearly 170 years after its completion. This enormously important book takes the form of a journey through Egypt from north to south, with descriptions of all the ancient monuments and contemporary life that Lane explored along the way.

The invention of mummification enabled the ancient Egyptians to preserve the bodies not only of humans but also of animals, so that they could live forever. Mummified animals are of four different types: food offerings, pets, sacred animals, and votive offerings. Here, a series of studies on the different types of animal mummies, the methods of mummification, and the animal cemeteries located at sites throughout Egypt are drawn together in a definitive volume on ancient Egyptian animal mummies. Studies of these animals provide information not only about the fauna of the country, and indirectly, its climate, but also about animal domestication, veterinary practices, human nutrition, mummification technology, and the religious practices of the ancient Egyptians.

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 BCE, during the little-known Saite period. Approaching the subject from both business and personal aspects, he gives us a fresh look at some facets of ancient Egypt that have mostly been hidden from view-such as putting up one's children as security for a loan.

Few Western scholars of the Middle East have exerted such profound influence as Edward William Lane. Lane's Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (1836), which has never gone out of print, remains as a highly authoritative study of Middle Eastern society. His annotated translation of the Arabian Nights (1839–41) retains a devoted readership. Lane's recently recovered and published Description of Egypt (2000) shows that he was a pioneering Egyptologist as well as orientalist. The capstone of his career, the definitive Arabic-English Lexicon (1863–93), is an indispensable reference tool. Yet, despite his extraordinary influence, little was known about Lane and virtually nothing about how he did his work. Now, in this full-length biography, Lane's life and accomplishments are examined in full, including his crucial years of field work in Egypt, revealing the life of a great Victorian scholar and presenting a fascinating episode in east-west encounter, interaction, and representation.

Who are the Arab women filmakers? What drives them? What are their experiences in a male-dominated profession? How do they function within the contexts — and constraints — of patriarchal societies? The answers are complex and sometimes surprising, as complex and surprising as the vastly different films these women direct. This book assembles a comprehensive and penetrating look into the history of Arab women's filmmaking, as well as the political and social background of the countries — Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Algeria, among others — from which these artists emerged. In addition to the biographies, filmographies, and discussions of their most important works, lively, in-depth interviews allow us to hear from the filmmakers themselves. Collectively, these women, who hail from a wide range of professional, religious, and social backgrounds, provide a varied and vivid picture of what it means to work in creative and journalistic fields in the modern Arab world. For this book, the subject of a film, its genesis, and the personal story of the artist who created it reveal far more than a particular approach to cinematography. Arab women filmmakers and their main characters (who are often semi-autobiographical) not only afford us a look at seldom-seen facets of Arab societies, they personify an alternative women's “model,” one that is far removed from western clichés.

This book provides a new study of Egypt's resources for elder care, and an exploration of the cultural and social attitudes that impact this ever-increasing need in modern society. The Egyptian society is aging, families have to find solutions for care-dependent older persons, while at the same time, social changes threaten the traditional system of family care. The society has to adapt to this previously unknown situation and to develop new strategies for meeting the needs of its older members. Based on eight years of research, this book investigates the cultural shifts necessitated by these developments. It introduces the reader to the nursing homes and home care services that are currently available in Egypt's bigger cities. It describes how younger persons face the challenges of the new profession of caregiving and how recipients adapt in different ways to the situation of receiving care by non-family members. Besides examining culturally rooted attitudes, care needs and their related factors are analyzed.