The presence of Jews on Cyprus during Ptolemaic and Roman rule, although attested by diverse historical sources, has not been convincingly identified archaeologically. However, the pottery style named Cypriot Sigillata A, may provide oblique evidence of the Jewish Diaspora on Cyprus, or at least its end. This paper will propose a causalrelationship between two seemingly…
The Eugene Berman Collection: A Roman Memoir
This memoir recounts the author’s first meetings with David Soren in Tunis and Rome during the summer of 1970. It also records an influential visit to the Roman apartment of a major artist and collector of Etruscan antiquities, Eugene Berman (1899–1972), that same summer and gives a brief description of the collection, now the property…
The Şekerhane Köşkü at Selinus (Cilicia): The Temple of the Deified Trajan
In 117 CE the emperor Trajan died at Selinus (modern Gazipaşa, Turkey) while returning to Italy from the East. A building preserved among the ruins of the ancient city has been historically labeled as a cenotaph associated with the emperor’s death in the city. This structure has been identified as temple-like by the recent excavators,…
Lamps in Ceramic Assemblages: A Case Study in Late Republican and Early Imperial Central Italy
The examination of the percentages of functional groups in the composition of ceramic assemblages has been shown to be a useful approach to interpreting a site. This was particularly clear with transport vessels. This study focuses on lamps in central Italy between the late republican and early imperial periods. As the least well represented group,…
Unpublished or Little-known Archaeological Evidence of the Roman Period in the Territory of Lugnano in Teverina—Umbria (Italy)
Lugnano in Teverina is internationally famous for its archaeology thanks to the remarkable discoveries made in Poggio Gramignano during the investigations of the American team of archaeologists from the University of Arizona, lead by Prof. David Soren. The archaeological campaigns of the late 1980s and early ‘90s revealed the remains of a Roman rustic villa,…
Sacred Serpent Symbols: The Bearded Snakes of Etruria
The symbolic attributes of snakes, which have appeared in art for thousands of years in all corners of the world, make them a popular icon. In Etruria, bearded snakes become symbols of fear, protection, and perhaps even the afterlife (due to the shedding of their skin), i.e., as the chthonic dwellers of the Underworld. They…
Late Roman Tombs at Tróia (Portugal): The Mensae
In the Roman fish-salting production center of Tróia (Portugal), one of the largest of the Empire, many mensa tombs have been identified in the last decades in several areas of the site. Since this type of tomb is fairly rare in Portugal and on the Iberian Peninsula, while it is rather common in Roman Africa,…
Catullus, Serapis, and Harpocrates
This essay examines three Catullan references to Isiac divinities in the light of controversies over the restoration of Ptolemy XII Auletes to the Egyptian throne and popular struggles to establish sanctuaries of those deities on the Capitoline. It argues for connections between a mention of an eight-bearer litter in c. 10 and the lectica octaphoros…
The New-Old Interest in Roman Foodways
What and how the Romans ate has long been of popular and academic interest, benefiting from a rich body of evidence from textual, iconographic, artefactual and environmental sources. Scholarly publications on Roman dietary practices have increased over the past hundred years, particularly in the last two decades. To what extent does the contemporary discourse on…
Orvieto and the waterways network
In antiquity “road networks” of various kinds played an essential role in defining the territory and determining where settlements and production villas and farms were to be located. This study deals in particular with the waterways in Umbria, involving rivers such as the Tiber, the Paglia and the Chiani, which were all navigable at the…
A Mnḫprrꜥ Scarab from Tel Abel Beth Maacah
During excavations at Tell Abil el-Qameḥ, identified as the biblical Abel Beth Maacah and located in the Upper Galilee on the modern border between Israel, Lebanon and Syria, a high-quality Mnḫprrꜥ scarab was found in an Iron Age I context, just above substantial Late Bronze IIB remains. Its typology suggests it to be a product from…
Wagons and Carts and Their Significance in Ancient Egypt
In ancient Egypt, the wheel was known since the Fifth Dynasty. About sixty wagons with four to eight wheels and only a few two-wheeled carts are attested. The first wheels appear on a scaling ladder and a siege tower in military contexts. The earliest wheeled vehicle is proven to have been in use in the…
A Corpus of Nineteenth Dynasty Egyptian Pottery from Zawiyet Umm El-Rakham
This paper presents the preliminary results of research on the Nineteenth Dynasty Egyptian pottery corpus from the fort of Zawiyet Umm el-Rakham, located 300 km west of Alexandria within ancient Libya (Tjemeh). It focuses on defining typical shapes and characteristics of the assemblage, as well as investigating its possible origins. It presents the results of…
Egypt’s Role in the Origins of Science: An Essay in Aligning Conditions, Evidence and Interpretations
The author argues that the evidence of observation in Egyptian third millennium BCE medicine and astronomy should allow ancient Egypt an important place in the history of science. The argument is primarily based on the absence of evidence of scientific observation in Mesopotamia preceding the Egyptian material, which renders the Egyptian observations of the movements…
Bringing Egypt to America: George Gliddon and the Panorama of the Nile
In 19th century America, few people had knowledge of ancient Egypt. George Gliddon’s Panorama of the Nile was the first traveling exhibition that featured lectures and exhibitions of its civilization, its history, its art, and its culture. Although the exhibition was short-lived, it reached a great many people during its tour, inculcating them with its lessons. This article…
A Curatorial Dilemma: An Examination of Temporary Exhibitions Combining African and Egyptian Visual Culture
This paper considers how three exhibitions in the 1990s and 2000s displayed ancient Egyptian and African art together to form a more “holistic” art historical approach to the African continent. The effectiveness of these exhibitions will be examined, as will how this information can aid current scholars and curators in the future. DOI:10.2458/azu_jaei_v08i1_cummins
Ancient Egypt on Stage from Bonaparte’s Military Campaign up to the Present Time
The popularity of ancient Egyptian themes found expression on stage, where opera designers of sets and costumes tried to strike a balance among the public’s idea of Egyptand the tastes of the day. The disguise of Egypt—both historical and fantastical—allowed for the exploration on stage of many ways to transpose the archaeological knowledge of the…
Neither Leisure Class nor Colonialists: Pre-Great War Slovak Travelers in Egypt
Prominent narratives of the 19th century dealing with Egypt were mostly written by members of the colonial powers, but individuals of other nations and nationalities also longed to see Egypt without having any ambitions there. This paper focuses on two travelers, Daniel Šustek (a traveling craftsman) and Ján Roháček (an itinerant Pietist preacher), from the northern…
Ancient Corpses as Curiosities: Mummymania in the Age of Early Travel
During the 19th to early 20th centuries, when “Egyptomania” swept the western world, swathes of travelers and tourists ventured to Egypt to indulge their obsessive interest in the land of the Nile. These early travelers enjoyed access to Egypt’s ancient past to an extent unimaginable today, and many returned with mummy souvenirs that now fill museum collections…
A Different Kind of Digging: Social Anthropology as Archaeological Fieldwork Practice
Using the Noble Tombs of the Theban necropolis as its starting point, but with obvious implications for other archaeological sites where there is a close relationship with resident local communities, this paper calls for archaeological research in Egypt to concern itself with the entire stratigraphy of a site, including the most recent sequence with its…
Archaeological Excavations at Cecil B. Demille’s 1923 The Ten Commandments Film Set, Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes, California
The movie set used to film the prologue of Cecil B. DeMille’s 1923 silent movie classic The Ten Commandments was constructed in today’s Rancho Guadalupe Dunes Preserve in California. Featuring a replica of a pharaonic Egyptian city, archaeologists from Applied EarthWorks, Inc. investigated the ruins in 2012 and again in 2014. DOI:10.2458/azu_jaei_v09i1_hamilton
Aegean Emissaries in the Tomb of Senenmut and Their Gift to the Egyptian King
This paper examines the representations of the objects brought by the Aegean emissaries depicted in the foreigners’ procession scene in the tomb of Senenmut (TT 71). Through comparison of the depicted objects with the ones found in the Aegean it is argued that not only is it possible to find close analogies for single objects…
A Multi-Analytical Approach Applied to the Archaeometric Study of a Greco-Roman Decorated Wooden Panel from Egypt
The present manuscript describes a series of non-invasive analyses of a Greco-Roman Period polychrome consecration panel, found during excavation south of the pyramid of Djedkare at Saqqara (Haram el-Shawaf) and now located in the Atfeh repository (Cairo). Multiple techniques of examination and analysis (optical microscopy, fluorescent microscopy, scanning electron microscopy/energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction,…
A Note on an Amenhotep III Plaque from Tel Burna
The discovery of a plaque associated to the New Kingdom at Tel Burna in the southern Levant augments archaeological evidence to enhance historical understanding of the Late Bronze Age occupation at the site.
Qedešet: A Syro-Anatolian Goddess in Egypt
This article considers the iconographic origins of the Egyptian goddess Qedešet and her Levantine cognate Qudšu through an examination of their individual iconographic elements, such as V-pose arms, snakes, and coiffures. As the evidence indicates, the nude, en face female, typically standing upon an animal and often portrayed as a potnia therôn, derives from Anatolia….
Comments on Minoan Beetle Images
Images of beetles begin to appear in Minoan Crete early in the Middle Bronze Age. Because one of the earliest manifestations of this phenomenon is in the form of scarab seals that reflect Egyptian prototypes, a natural question involves whether the meaning of this symbol was transferred to Crete along with the imagery. This article…
Turned Weapons in Egyptian Iconography – The Decorum of Dominance
While numerous studies have been published on Egyptian weaponry over the years, relatively few have looked at symbolic aspects of the use and display of weapons in Egyptian art and in actual combat. In the 1990’s the present author produced a series of studies on the symbolic use of the “turned bow” showing its actual…
The Hidden Ruler: Art and Politics in Minoan Crete
Although there are numerous images that can be associated with the expression of the values and ideals of the ruling elites, the absence of overt ruler propaganda in Minoan official art is striking and has often been commented on. This paper argues that with regard to the expression of political power Minoan culture favoured the…
Sacred Prostitution in Minoan Crete? A New Interpretation of Some Old Archaeological Findings
Sacred prostitution remained for several years a taboo topic in the study of the ancient Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean. Despite the fact that some ancient writers refer to it, several scholars doubted its practice, in the frame of the noble Greek civilization. Recently, R. Strong put the question, re-interpreting archaeological data from sites reported as…
Skylines: Borders of Materiality, Thresholds to Heaven
Skylines partake in the “public image,” as symbols of an urban collective. They are urban signatures that present an abbreviated image of the city’s identity. In the Minoan world skylines can be approached only indirectly: firstly, by inferring how buildings emerged in the vertical and secondly, through the depictions of architectural compounds in Minoan art….