Regularly, repeatedly, and with impunity, queens like Hatshepsut, Nefertiti, and Cleopatra controlled the totalitarian state as power-brokers and rulers. But throughout human history, women in positions of power were more often used as political pawns in a male-dominated society. What was so special about ancient Egypt that provided women this kind of access to the highest political office? What was it about these women that allowed them to transcend patriarchal obstacles? What did Egypt gain from its liberal reliance on female leadership, and could today's world learn from its example?Celebrated Egyptologist Kara Cooney delivers a fascinating tale of female power, exploring the reasons why it has seldom been allowed through the ages, and why we should care.

    150 and c. 750, came to differ from "Classical civilization."These centuries, as the author demonstrates, were the era in which the most deeply rooted of ancient institutions disappeared for all time. By 476 the Roman empire had vanished from western Europe; by 655 the Persian empire had vanished from the Near East.Peter Brown, Professor of History at Princeton University, examines these changes and men's reactions to them, but his account shows that the period was also one of outstanding new beginnings and defines the far-reaching impact both of Christianity on Europe and of Islam on the Near East. The result is a lucid answer to a crucial question in world history; how the exceptionally homogeneous Mediterranean world of c. 200 became divided into the three mutually estranged societies of the Middle Ages: Catholic Western Europe, Byzantium and Islam. We still live with the results of these contrasts.

    Their horses were quivering in their every limb, ready to crush the [foreign] countries under their feet...Those who reached my boundary, their seed is not; their heart and soul are finished forever and ever." – An inscription made during the reign of Ramesses III When scholars look at the passage of history, certain epochs and transitions to new periods tend to stand out. The transition from the early modern to the Industrial Age in the late 18th century and the collapse of the Roman Empire are two of the more well known, but the transition from the Bronze to the Iron Age during the late 13th and early 12th centuries BCE arguably changed the structure and course of world history more fundamentally than any period before or since. During this period, numerous wealthy and enduring kingdoms of the eastern Mediterranean Sea region collapsed, and new ones rose in their places. At the center of this period of turmoil was a group of people known today as the Sea Peoples, the English translation of the name given to them by the Egyptians. Despite their prominent role in history, however, the Sea Peoples remain as mysterious as they were influential; while the Egyptians documented their presence and the wars against them, it has never been clear exactly where the Sea Peoples originated from, or what compelled them to invade various parts of the region with massive numbers. Whatever the reason, the Sea Peoples posed an existential threat to the people already living in the region, as noted by an Egyptian inscription: “The foreign countries (i.e. Sea Peoples) made a conspiracy in their islands. All at once the lands were removed and scattered in the fray. No land could stand before their arms: from Hatti, Qode, Carchemish, Arzawa and Alashiya on, being cut off (i.e. destroyed) at one time. A camp was set up in Amurru. They desolated its people, and its land was like that which has never come into being. They were coming forward toward Egypt, while the flame was prepared before them. Their confederation was the Peleset, Tjeker, Shekelesh, Denyen and Weshesh, lands united. They laid their hands upon the land as far as the circuit of the earth, their hearts confident and trusting: 'Our plans will succeed!'" As with any historical matter from the ancient world, the sources can be a problem. The ancient Egyptians recorded their interactions with the Sea Peoples in both written texts and in pictorial reliefs and thus provide the most complete contemporary description of them, but the nature of ancient Egyptian historiography was quite different than the modern concept, so the sources cannot be considered entirely reliable. Later Greek sources, both historiographical and mythological, can help fill in some more details, but those sources are suspect because they were written several centuries after the emergence of the Sea Peoples. Modern archaeology is beneficial in determining how people lived and possibly where they moved, but there are also problems when one relies too much on archaeological data because the dating of material culture is not an exact science. Finally, linguistic evidence is often employed to determine the geographic origins and eventual landing points of many of the Sea Peoples, but confusion often arises if a group’s demonym refers specifically to their place of origin or final home. Naturally, the mystery surrounding the Sea Peoples has led to all kinds of theories aiming to identify them.

    The Ancient Egyptians are remembered by their gods, pyramids, pharaohs, mummification, hieroglyphs, agriculture and much more. This book reveals the secrets of the captivating world of Ancient Egypt, the intriguing stories of its celebrities, such as the Akhenaten, Ramses the Great, Queen Cleopatra, and the boy-king Tut. You’ll learn about mighty gods and the magical link between the Sun and the people of Egypt, and explore the horrendous burial rituals that warranted a safe path to the afterlife. Find out the secrets of one of the most magnificent societies that ever existed and discover why it still manages to seize the attention of the world. Some of the topics covered in this book include: Who Were Ancient Egyptians—Their Origins, History, and Geography Who Held the Power: The Social Structure of Ancient Egypt Kings and their Military Power The Magnificent Pharaohs of the New Kingdom and Their Empire The Decay and End of the Egyptian Civilization A Romance, Politics, and Tragedy: The Story of Cleopatra VII The Religion, Mythology, and Rituals of Ancient Egyptians Funerary Beliefs and Rituals: Mummification and Afterlife The Architecture of Ancient Egypt: Temples and Pyramids And much more! Scroll to the top and select the "BUY NOW" button for instant download

    Long celebrated as a pathbreaking achievement in the social history of the ancient world, M.I. Finley's brilliant study remains, as classicist Bernard Knox notes in his introduction to this new edition, "as indispensable to the professional as it is accessible to the general reader"--a fundamental companion for students of Homer and Homeric Greece.

    “The group of beliefs which constituted what for convenience' sake is called the Egyptian religion in an existence of some thousands of years passed through nearly every phase known to the student of comparative mythology. If the theologians of ancient Egypt found it impossible to form a pantheon of deities with any hope of consistency, assigning to each god or goddess his or her proper position in the divine galaxy as ruling over a definite sphere, cosmic or psychical, it may be asked in what manner the modern mythologist is better equipped to reduce to order elements so recondite and difficult of elucidation as the mythic shapes of the divinities worshipped in the Nile Valley.”

    We meet the Greek gods on Olympus and Norse gods in Valhalla. We follow the drama of the Trojan War and the wanderings of Odysseus. We hear the tales of Jason and the Golden Fleece, Cupid and Psyche, and mighty King Midas. We discover the origins of the names of the constellations. And we recognize reference points for countless works of art, literature, and cultural inquiry--from Freud's Oedipus complex to Wagner's Ring Cycle of operas to Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra. Praised throughout the world for its authority and lucidity, Mythology is Edith Hamilton's masterpiece--the standard by which all other books on mythology are measured.

    Rogue adventurer and maverick archaeologist David Hatcher Childress takes the reader on an unforgettable journeys deep into deadly jungles, windswept mountains and scorching deserts in search of lost civilizations and ancient mysteries.

    2600-2400 b.c.) were vast astronomically sophisticated temples, rather than the pharaonic tombs depicted by conventional Egyptology. In March 1993, a tiny remote-controlled robot created by Rudolf Gantenbrink, a German robotics engineer, traveled up airshafts within the Great Pyramid of Giza and relayed to scientists video pictures of a hitherto unknown sealed door within the pyramid. Bauval, a British engineer and writer who has been investigating the pyramids for more than ten years, and Gilbert, a British publishing consultant, use Gantenbrink's tantalizing discovery as a launching pad for an extended analysis of the purpose of the mysterious airshafts, which lead from the Great Pyramid's chambers to its exterior, and of the placement of other Fourth Dynasty pyramids. They were sited, the authors argue, to coincide with the key stars of Orion, a constellation that had religious significance for the Egyptians. Bauval and Gilbert claim that the shafts were pointed directly at important stars in Orion--that is, at those stars as they were placed in ancient times. Using astronomical data about stellar movement, they argue that the Orion stars coincide exactly with the pyramids' positions in approximately 10,400 b.c.--a period the Egyptians called the First Time, when they believed the god Osiris ruled the Earth. The authors also speculate that the mysterious space within the Great Pyramid discovered by Gantenbrink contains the mythical Benben stone, which the Egyptians linked to the creation of the world. The book's contentions are sometimes far-fetched and certainly unlikely to put scholarly controversy about the pyramids to rest. Still, this is an enjoyably radical rethinking of the mystery of the pyramids, with some ingenious arguments made in lucid style.A revolutionary book that explains the most enigmatic and fascinating wonder of the ancient world: the Pyramids of Egypt. "[An] absorbing and fascinating work of archaeological detection...clearly and rivetingly told...the book is highly and compulsively readable."--London Sunday Times. 16-page black-and-white inserts.

    When famed archaeologist Arthur Evans unearthed the ruins of a sophisticated Bronze Age civilization that flowered on Crete 1,000 years before Greece's Classical Age, he discovered a cache of ancient tablets, Europe's earliest written records. For half a century, the meaning of the inscriptions, and even the language in which they were written, would remain a mystery. Award-winning New York Times journalist Margalit Fox's riveting real-life intellectual detective story travels from the Bronze Age Aegean--the era of Odysseus, Agamemnon, and Helen--to the turn of the 20th century and the work of charismatic English archeologist Arthur Evans, to the colorful personal stories of the decipherers. These include Michael Ventris, the brilliant amateur who deciphered the script but met with a sudden, mysterious death that may have been a direct consequence of the decipherment; and Alice Kober, the unsung heroine of the story whose painstaking work allowed Ventris to crack the code.

    For your average Egyptian, life was tough, and work was hard, conducted under the burning gaze of the sun god Ra.During the course of a day in the ancient city of Thebes (modern-day Luxor), Egypt’s religious capital, we meet 24 Egyptians from all strata of society – from the king to the bread-maker, the priestess to the fisherman, the soldier to the midwife – and get to know what the real Egypt was like by spending an hour in their company. We encounter a different one of these characters every hour and in every chapter, and through their eyes see what an average day in ancient Egypt was really like.

    Perfect for parents who wish to teach their children and for those who would like to learn or relearn the facts themselves, A Classical Education is informative and educational, but in a completely accessible way, including:• Latin and Greek• Logic and philosophy• Natural sciences• Art and architecture• Poetry and drama• History and Classical literatureAlso including suggestions for further reading and entertaining tit-bits of information on the classics, A Classical Education is a must for anyone feeling let down by modern schooling.

    This is the first history of ancient Egypt for 25 years Brings together the very latest textual and archaeological evidence The index, bibliography and appendices make this an invaluable reference tool New guide to further reading in English especially commissioned for the paperback edition

    It delves into the creation and evolution of the world and the reigns of the gods on earth, before introducing us to the manifestations of Egypt's deities in the natural environment; the inventive ways in which the Egyptians dealt with the invisible forces all around them; and their beliefs about life after death. Through his engaging narrative, Garry Shaw guides us through the mythic adventures of such famous deities as Osiris, the god murdered by his jealous brother Seth; the magical and sometimes devious Isis, who plotted to gain the power of the sun god Re; and Horus, who defeated his uncle Seth to become king of Egypt. He also introduces us to lesser known myths, such as the rebellions against Re; Geb's quest for Re's magical wig; and the flaying of the unfortunate god Nemty. From stars and heavenly bodies sailing on boats, to the wind as manifestation of the god Shu, to gods, goddesses, ghosts, and demons--beings that could be aggressive, helpful, wise, or dangerous--Shaw goes on to explain how the Egyptians encountered the mythological in their everyday lives.

    The myths and legends of the ancient worlds, from Greece, Rome and Egypt to the Norse and Celtic lands, through Persia and India to China and the Far East, the Ultimate Encyclopedia of Mythology is a comprehensive A to Z of the classic stories of gods and goddesses, heroes and mythical beasts, wizards and warriors.