Bøger udgivet af American University in Cairo Press

A richly illustrated account of the rulers of the first three dynasties of the ancient Egyptian civilization, written by renowned Egyptologist Aidan DodsonThe five centuries that followed the unification of Egypt around 3100 BC-the first three dynasties-were crucial in the evolution of the Egyptian state. During this time all the key elements of the civilization that would endure for three millennia were put in place, centered on the semidivine king himself. The First Pharaohs: Their Lives and Afterlives looks at what we know about the two-dozen kings (and one queen-regent) who ruled Egypt during this formative era, from the scanty evidence for the events of their reigns, through to their surviving monuments. It also considers how they were remembered under their successors, when some of the earliest kings' names were attributed to allegedly ancient ideas and events, and the ways in which some of their monuments became tourist attractions or were even wholly repurposed.Aidan Dodson recounts how two centuries of modern scholarship have allowed these rulers to emerge from an oblivion so total that some archaeologists had come to doubt their very existence outside the works of ancient chroniclers. Then, within a decade at the end of the nineteenth century, archaeological discoveries revealed a whole series of tombs and other monuments that not only confirmed these rulers' existence, but also showcased the skills of Egyptian craftsmen at the dawn of history.

As one of the first non-European journals to critically address the category of Weltliteratur bilingually from the perspective of the Global South, this special issue of Alif addresses this problem theoretically and empirically. The critical conversation about the problem of the category of Weltliteratur is not only extended beyond the European and North American sphere that has largely dominated and framed the discussion of Weltliteratur, but is juxtaposed formally in a way that permits us to understand that there are other "world literatures" that allow us to reexamine the contending theories, practices, and underlying assumptions of Weltliteratur.

This interdisciplinary issue of the literary journal Alif is devoted to the desert-as a geographical locus and symbolic image-and to various texts related to it, drawn from literature and the arts, history and anthropology, film and environmental studies.Scholars from the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and North America contribute articles in Arabic, English, and French related to the visual representation of the desert in medieval iconography and in contemporary cinema, in American poetry and in pre-Islamic poetics, in human geography and in sociological thought, in French novels and in Arabic novels, in religious traditions and in ecological approaches, in travel literature and in critical discourse.Includes contributions by Saeed Alwakeel, Saad El Bazei, Sharif Elmusa, Jehan Farouk, Naglaa Hassan, Abdullah Ibrahim, Salma Mobarak, Senayon Olaoluwa, Yasmine Ramadan, Nathalie Roman, Randa Sabry.

"January 25, 2011, was a watershed moment for Egypt and a transformative experience for the young men and women who changed the course of their nation's history. Tahrir's Youth tells the story of the organized youth behind the mass uprising that brought about the spectacular collapse of the Mubarak regime. Who were these activists? What did they want? How did the movement they unleashed shape them as it unfolded, and why did it fall short of its goals? Drawing on first-hand testimonies, this study offers rich insight into the hopes, successes, failures, and disillusionments of the movement's leaders"--

A guide to the Nubian Monuments with an introduction to the history and culture of Nubia during the pharaonic period

"There has been considerable scholarship in the last fifty years on the role of ancient Egyptian women in society. With their ability to work outside the home, inherit and dispense of property, initiate divorce, testify in court, and serve in local government, Egyptian women exercised more legal rights and economic independence than their counterparts throughout antiquity. Yet, their agency and autonomy are often downplayed, undermined, or outright ignored. In Women in Ancient Egypt, twenty-four international scholars offer a corrective to this view by presenting the latest cutting-edge research on women and gender in ancient Egypt. Covering the entirety of Egyptian history, from earliest times to Late Antiquity, this volume commences with a thorough study of the earliest written evidence of Egyptian women, both royal and non-royal, before moving on to chapters that deal with various aspects of Egyptian queens, followed by studies on the legal status and economic roles of non-royal women and, finally, on women's health and body adornment. Within this sweeping chronological range, each study is intensely focused on the evidence recovered from a particular site or a specific time-period. Rather than following a strictly chronological arrangement, the thematic organization of chapters enables readers to discern diachronic patterns of continuity and change within each group of women."--

A stunning photographic compilation of Egypt's abandoned palaces and grand buildingsBetween 1860 and 1940, Cairo and other large cities in Egypt witnessed a major construction boom that gave birth to extraordinary palaces and lavish buildings. These incorporated a mix of architectural styles, such as Beaux-Arts and Art Deco, with local design influences and materials. Today, many lie empty and neglected, rapidly succumbing to time, a real-estate frenzy, and an ongoing population crisis. In 2006 Russian-born photographer Xenia Nikolskaya began the process of documenting these structures. She gained exceptional access to them, taking photographs at some thirty locations, including Cairo, Alexandria, Luxor, Minya, Esna, and Port Said. These photographs were documented in the first edition of Dust: Egypt's Forgotten Architecture, which soon after its release in 2012 became a rare collector's item.This revised and expanded edition includes photographs from the first edition together with extra unseen images and new photographs taken by Nikolskaya between 2013 and 2021. It also includes previously unpublished essays by Heba Farid, co-owner of the Cairo-based photo gallery Tintera, and architect and urban planner Omar Nagati, co-founder of CLUSTER, an urban design and research platform also in Cairo.Dust: Egypt's Forgotten Architecture leads us seductively into some of the most breathtaking architectural spaces of Egypt's recent past, filled with a sense of both the immense weight and the impermanence of history.

"The Egyptian Economy in the Twenty-first Century addresses the question of why Egypt, despite possessing a plethora of assets-such as a fertile agriculture, a strategic geographic location, oil and gas deposits, innumerable tourist sites, a labor force prized by regional countries, and a diaspora that remits large amounts of funds-has seldom performed to its economic potential during the last sixty years. Indeed, economic weakness created political weakness, and often exposed the country to foreign diktats. What should the country do to change this state of affairs? Nineteen internationally recognized authorities on the Egyptian economy discuss the critical challenges that the Egyptian economy is likely to face in the next two to three decades, challenges which must be overcome in order to improve the life of Egypt's citizens and to protect the country from external pressures. Their analyses cover population and employment; development strategies; principal macroeconomic issues; development of a digital economy; fiscal and monetary matters; the external sector; poverty and income distribution; the enterprise structure; higher education; water availability; urbanization; institutional performance; and many others."--

A fascinating, richly illustrated study of the role and significance of ancient statues in Egyptian history and beliefWhy do ancient Egyptian statues so often have their noses, hands, or genitals broken? Although the Late Antiquity period appears to have been one of the major moments of large-scale vandalism against pagan monuments, various contexts bear witness to several phases of reuse, modification, or mutilation of statues throughout and after the pharaonic period. Reasons for this range from a desire to erase the memory of specific rulers or individuals for ideological reasons to personal vengeance, war, tomb plundering, and the avoidance of a curse; or simply the reuse of material for construction or the need to ritually "deactivate" and bury old statues, without the added motive of explicit hostility toward the subject in question.Drawing on the latest scholarship and over 100 carefully selected illustrations, Ancient Egyptian Statues proceeds from a general discussion of the production and meaning of sculptures, and the mechanisms of their destruction, to review the role of ancient statuary in Egyptian history and belief. It then moves on to explore the various means of damage and their significance, and the role of restoration and reuse.Art historian Simon Connor offers an innovative and lucidly written reflection on beliefs and practices relating to statuary, and images more broadly, in ancient Egypt, showing how statues were regarded as the active manifestations of the entities they represented, and the ways in which they could endure many lives before being finally buried or forgotten.

"The relationship between the city and cinema is formidable. The images and sounds of the city found in movies are perhaps the only experience that many people will have of cities they may never visit. Films influence the way we construct images of the world, and accordingly, in many instances, how we operate within it. Cinematic Cairo offers a history of Cairo's urban modernity using film as the primary source of exploration, and cinematic space as both an analytical tool and a medium of critique. Cairo has provided rich subject material for the Egyptian film industry since the inception of the art form at the end of the nineteenth century. The "reel" city-imagined, perceived, and experienced-provides the spatial domain that mirrors change and allows for an interrogation of the "real" city as it encountered modernity over the course of a century. Bringing together chapters by architects and art and literary historians, this volume explores this parallel and convergent relationship through two sections. The first uses films from the 1930s to the end of the twentieth century to illustrate the development of a modern Cairo and its modern subjects. The second section is focused on tracing the transformation of the cinematic city under conditions of neoliberalism, religious fundamentalism, and gender tensions. The result is a comprehensive narrative of the urban modernity of one of the most important cities in the Arab world and Global South."--

A wide-ranging exploration of the relationship between history and literatureThis issue of Alif explores the relationship between literature and history. What do history and literature have to say to each other? What can literature say that history cannot, and vice versa? Do they work with or against each other? How does the literary dimension of history affect its status, and how does the historicity of literature, in turn, shape its being? What would it mean to speak of a "literariness of history" today? The terms "literature" and "history" in our title are intended to be construed in the broadest possible sense and to cover the widest possible range of genres and modalities of literary and historical writing. The recent proliferation of epithets and sub-disciplines in the study of both literature and history has fundamentally changed both fields while raising further questions about the possibility of scholarly debates that traverse them.Contributors- Balthazar I. Beckett, American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt- Mohamed Birairi, Beni-Suef University, Beni-Suef, Egypt, and the American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt- Ziad Dallal, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, USA- Karim Elsaiad, Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt- Itzea Goikolea-Amiano, SOAS, University of London, London, UK- Rebecca Ruth Gould, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK- Magdi Guirguis, Kafrelsheikh University, Kafr al-Sheikh, Egypt- Isabelle Hesse, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia- Abdullah Ibrahim, literary critic- Madonna Kalousian, independent scholar- Céza Kassem, independent scholar- Ahmed F. Khaleel, University of York, York, UK- Tarif Khalidi, American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon- Peter Kornicki, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK- Wen-chi Li, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland- Azza Madian, Cairo Conservatoire and American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt- Francesca Orsini, SOAS, University of London, London, UK- Daniel Rivet, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris, France- Anne C. Vila, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, USA

GOURMAND AWARD WINNER 2023, BEST ILLUSTRATEDA delightfully illustrated selection of 100 commonly used Egyptian food expressions Can you guess what Egyptians mean when they say that something is "a peeled banana" or that someone is "sleeping in honey" or has "turned the sea to tahini"? You may find the answers quite unexpected when you open the pages of this delightful giftbook featuring some one hundred popular food-inflected phrases and sayings used by native speakers of Egyptian Arabic.Idiomatic expressions lend color, dynamism, and humor to everyday speech, and convey complex ideas and beliefs with an economy of words that also tell us something about the culture from which they spring. Each expression in Fish, Milk, Tamarind is given in Arabic script and English transliteration followed by its literal and intended meanings, while humorous color illustrations throughout help readers visualize and remember the expressions. Learners and native speakers of Arabic, as well as Egypt enthusiasts and language lovers will find much in this book to teach, entertain, and enthrall them.

"When Parliaments Ruled the Middle East explores three main interrelated issues to clarify what happened between 1946 and 1963 in Iraq and Syria: how and why a parliamentary system prevailed in both countries in the aftermath of the Second World War; what social effects this system triggered and, in turn, how these changes affected the system; and finally, why the elites in both countries were unable to overcome the unrest that brought an end to both a liberal era and to a certain kind of political game. Drawing on a vast array of sources and rich archival research in French, English and Arabic, Matthieu Rey highlights the processes of the parliamentary system in the modern era, which are very common to post-independence countries and to any representative regime. He tackles the intersection of multifaceted political phenomena that were present in that moment in Iraq and Syria, including regular elections, the implementation of emergency law, the freedom of the press, the open expression of opinions, the formation of new political parties, frequent military coups, and the joint exercise of power by members of the old classes and reformist newcomers. Treating this period as neither an epilogue of the liberal order nor a prelude to authoritarianism, and stressing the contingent, improvisatory aspects of political history, Rey fundamentally questions the transitional nature of the period and in doing so proposes new ways and tools of examining it."--

"First published in Arabic in 2018 as Awlad haratina: sirat al-riwaya al-muharrama"--Title page verso.

"The art of the mosaic was developed by the Greeks, notably within the royal court of Macedonia, and was initially unknown to the Egyptians. Macedonian mosaicists then established busy workshops in the capital, Alexandria, and in the new towns of Greek Egypt. Under the stimulus of commissions from the Ptolemaic court, these workshops soon showed that they were capable of innovation. Beginning with pebbles, they then used tesserae of different sizes, and adopted new materials (glass, faience, paint) in order to transpose onto the floor images from grand paintings, which was the major art form of the time and was characterized by the vivid use of color. Alexandrian mosaicists were at the forefront of creativity during the Hellenistic period and their influence spread around the Mediterranean. After the Roman conquest of Egypt they adapted to the tastes of their new sponsors and to changes in architecture and were able to retain an important place within this art as it developed across the entire empire, in Rome and from east to west. The Mosaics of Alexandria provides the first overview of the mosaics and pavements of Egypt that were created between the end of the fourth century BC and the sixth century AD. It presents a selection of some seventy mosaics and pavements from Alexandria and Greco-Roman Egypt. Generally little known and more often than not unpublished, these works are illustrated here in full color, some for the first time. The aim is to better understand the artistic and artisanal production of a type of decoration that played an important role within the living environment of the ancients."--

""There could be no society, no family, and no social recognition without children. The way in which children were perceived, integrated, and raised within the family and the community established the very foundations of Egyptian society. Childhood in Ancient Egypt is the most comprehensive attempt yet published to reconstruct the everyday life of children from the Predynastic period to the end of the New Kingdom. Drawing on a vast wealth of textual, iconographic, and archaeological sources stretching over a period of 3,500 years, Amandine Marshall pieces together the portrait of a society in which children were ever-present in a multiplicity of situations. The ancient sources are primarily the expressions of male adults, who were little inclined to take an interest in the condition of the child, and the feelings of young Egyptians and all that touches on their emotional state can never be deduced from the sources. Nevertheless, by cross-referencing and comparing thousands of documents, Marshall has been able to explore how ancient Egyptians perceived children and childhood, and whether children had a particular status in the eyes of the law, society, and the Egyptian state. She examines the maintenance of the child and the care expended on its being, and discusses the kinds of clothing, jewelry, and hairstyles children wore, the activities that punctuated their daily lives, the kinds of games and toys they enjoyed, and what means were employed to protect them from illness, evil spirits, or ghosts. Accessibly written and copiously illustrated with 160 drawings and photographs, this book sheds unprecedented light upon the experience of childhood in ancient Egypt and represents a major contribution to the growing field of ancient-world childhood studies.""--