It is the purpose of this article to address the identity of the auxiliary Asiatic troops mentioned in the Elephantine Stele of Sethnakhte, founder of the Twentieth Dynasty. The identity of these auxiliaries will help to illuminate the political relations between Egypt and the Levant in the first quarter of the twelfth century bce. Furthermore, it is…
The Amarna Letters from Tyre as a Source for Understanding Atenism and Imperial Administration
It has long been recognized that the corpus of letters from Tyre discovered in the Amarna letter archive contain a number of Egyptianisms. Scholars have also recognized the presence of some West Semitic traits in the corpus, which are typical of the letters from Syro-Palestine. However, the intellectual context of those linguistic/cultural traits of the…
The Dead and Their Images: An Egyptian Etymology for Hebrew ’ôb
The term ’ôb has long been a philological mystery for scholars of classical Hebrew and Israelite religion. It does not seem to mean the same thing in all instances, and its etymology is unclear and contested. The present article argues that an Egyptian etymology for the term is most likely, and that it refers both to the…
A Geographical Analysis of the Injunctive in the Amarna Letters from Syria-Palestine and its Relevance for Egyptian Imperialism
The Amarna Letters from Syria- Palestine were written in a mixed language comprising the lingua franca, Akkadian, and what appears to be the local West- Semitic or “Canaanite” language. One of the more distinguishing features resulting From this combination of the two languages is the use of the injunctive form, limited in this article to the jussive…
A Cuneiform Legal Presence in “The Report of Wenamun”?
This article poses a question concerning the possible source(s) of the appearance, in an eleventh-century-BCE Egyptian narrative, of a legal injunction that, surprisingly, finds its closest written analogue in eighteenth-century Babylonian law. The author attempts to answer that question by postulating that the long process of idea transfer could have been facilitated by the Hurrians, a very…
Applying a Multi- Analytical Approach to the Investigation of Ancient Egyptian Influence in Nubian Communities: The Socio- Cultural Implications of Chemical Variation in Ceramic Styles
This article reviews published archaeological research that explores the potential of combined chemical and petrographic analyses to distinguish manufacturing methods of ceramics made From Nile river silt. The methodology was initially applied to distinguish the production methods of Egyptian and Nubian- style vessels found in New Kingdom and Napatan Period Egyptian colonial centers in Upper Nubia. Conducted in…
The Aamu of Shu in the Tomb of Khnumhotep II at Beni Hassan
This paper addresses the well- known scene of “Asiatics” in the tomb of Khnumhotep II at Beni Hassan (tomb BH 3), which an associated inscription dates to Year 6 of Senusret II (ca. 1897–1878 BCE). Many scholars have studied this scene and come to a variety of conclusions about the original home of the foreigners represented and…
A Devastated Foreign Landscape Depicted in Luxor Temple
A relief of Ramesses II located on the exterior western wall of the Processional Colonnade Hall of Luxor Temple portrays a devastated landscape surrounding an unnamed town. Analysis of the vegetation represented in this relief may indicate the general location of the unnamed town and is of interest to our understanding of Egyptian military interaction with the…
Egyptian Amethyst in the Bronze Age Aegean
Though the fashion for amethyst in Egypt and the Near East had, by the mid-eighteenth century bc, dried up along with the Wadi el-Hudi mine, the stone’s popularity persisted in the Aegean well into the twelfth century. Though amethyst-colored glass was sometimes substituted, an abundance of genuine, high-quality amethyst nevertheless made its way to the Aegean during…
Labeling Ancient Egyptian Complex-Media Varnishes as “Imperial”
The appearance—and subsequent disappearance—of complex-media varnishes in ancient Egypt coincides chronologically with the rise and fall of Egypt’s imperial ambitions in Asia, and analysis of the constituent oleoresins suggests this is no coincidence. It is therefore suggested that these varnishes be labeled as “imperial,” a useful contribution not only to the history of ancient Egyptian power and…
Hathor and Isis in Byblos in the Second and First Millennia BCE
The Egyptian goddesses Hathor and Isis both appear in Byblos under various guises and circumstances during the second and first millennia BCE. In fact, Hathor, who received cult in many foreign locales, is attested in Byblos in the third millennium. This discussion explores the presence of each of these deities in Byblos after describing their respective…
Can Scarabs Argue for the Origins of the Hyksos?
One of the most intriguing questions about the Second Intermediate Period in Egypt is the origin of the Hyksos—the foreign people who ruled over northern Egypt during this time. Their Levantine origin was conclusively demonstrated by archaeological evidence from Tell el-Dab’a, yet the evidence establishing the particular region they came from (i.e., the northern or…
Pa-Canaan in the Egyptian New Kingdom: Canaan or Gaza?
The identification of the geographical name “Canaan” continues to be widely debated in the scholarly literature. Cuneiform sources fromMari, Amarna, Ugarit, Aššur, and Hattusha have been discussed, as have Egyptian sources. Renewed excavations in North Sinai along the“Ways of Horus” have, along with recent scholarly reconstructions, refocused attention on the toponyms leading toward and culminating…
Pragmatic Technology and the Libyan Bronze Age
The last decade has seen an increase in our knowledge of the archaeology of the Libyans in the western desert of Egypt. This paper considers the extent to which the Libyans possessed a metals technology. Without access to indigenous ore bodies, it has been widely assumed that theLibyans lacked any metallurgical know- how. The discovery of crucibles…
The Indebtedness of Minoan Religion to Egyptian Solar Religion: Was Sir Arthur Evans Right?
Sir Arthur Evans believed that Minoan religion was highly indebted to Egyptian thought. He saw that the two cultures shared a solar theology expressed via similar iconographical schemes, such as the heraldic arrangement of lions on either side of a column and the astral associations of the goddess known to the Egyptians as Taweret and transmuted by…
Grasping the Griffin: Identifying and Characterizing the Griffin in Egyptian and West Semitic Tradition
The griffin is commonly understood to be an eagle-headed winged lion. I argue here that the Egyptian version has a falcon head, identifying it as a form of Horus; as an allomorph of the sphinx (seen most clearly on the axe-head of Ahmose), it represents the ka of the king. A digression into Judeo-Christian iconography argues…