The Nile

Author: Toby Wilkinson
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408839938
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 406

Book Description
From Herodotus's day to the present political upheavals, the steady flow of the Nile has been Egypt's heartbeat. It has shaped its geography, controlled its economy and moulded its civilisation. The same stretch of water which conveyed Pharaonic battleships, Ptolemaic grain ships, Roman troop-carriers and Victorian steamers today carries modern-day tourists past bankside settlements in which rural life – fishing, farming, flooding – continues much as it has for millennia. At this most critical juncture in the country's history, foremost Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson takes us on a journey up the Nile, north from Lake Victoria, from Cataract to Cataract, past the Aswan Dam, to the delta. The country is a palimpsest, every age has left its trace: as we pass the Nilometer on the island of Elephantine which since the days of the Pharaohs has measured the height of Nile floodwaters to predict the following season's agricultural yield and set the parameters for the entire Egyptian economy, the wonders of Giza which bear the scars of assault by nineteenth-century archaeologists and the modern-day unbridled urban expansion of Cairo – and in Egypt's earliest art (prehistoric images of fish-traps carved into cliffs) and the Arab Spring (fought on the bridges of Cairo) – the Nile is our guide to understanding the past and present of this unique, chaotic, vital, conservative yet rapidly changing land.

Beyond the Nile

Author: Sara E. Cole
Publisher: Getty Publications
ISBN: 1606065513
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 364

Book Description
From about 2000 BCE onward, Egypt served as an important nexus for cultural exchange in the eastern Mediterranean, importing and exporting not just wares but also new artistic techniques and styles. Egyptian, Greek, and Roman craftsmen imitated one another’s work, creating cultural and artistic hybrids that transcended a single tradition. Yet in spite of the remarkable artistic production that resulted from these interchanges, the complex vicissitudes of exchange between Egypt and the Classical world over the course of nearly 2500 years have not been comprehensively explored in a major exhibition or publication in the United States. It is precisely this aspect of Egypt’s history, however, that Beyond the Nile uncovers. Renowned scholars have come together to provide compelling analyses of the constantly evolving dynamics of cultural exchange, first between Egyptians and Greeks—during the Bronze Age, then the Archaic and Classical periods of Greece, and finally Ptolemaic Egypt—and later, when Egypt passed to Roman rule with the defeat of Cleopatra. Beyond the Nile, a milestone publication issued on the occasion of a major international exhibition, will become an indispensable contribution to the field. With gorgeous photographs of more than two hundred rare objects, including frescoes, statues, obelisks, jewelry, papyri, pottery, and coins, this volume offers an essential and inter-disciplinary approach to the rich world of artistic cross-pollination during antiquity.

The Nile: Natural and Cultural Landscape in Egypt

Author: Harco Willems
Publisher: transcript Verlag
ISBN: 383943615X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 371

Book Description
Although Herodot's dictum that "Egypt is a gift of the Nile" is proverbial, there has been only scant attention to the way the river impacted on ancient Egyptian society. Egyptologists frequently focus on the textual and iconographic record, whereas archaeologists and earth scientists approach the issue from the perspective of natural sciences. The contributions in this volume bridge this gap by analyzing the river both as a natural and as a cultural phenomenon. Adopting an approach of cultural ecology, it addresses issues like ancient land use, administration and taxation, irrigation, and religious concepts.

I Found Out I'm Dying

Author: Sporty King
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780965409841
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 196

Book Description
Discusses life in ancient Egypt, with an overview and timeline of the years between 3050 and 30 B.C., and looks at agriculture, belief systems, art, health, the role of women and children, rulers, war, and other aspects of life along the Nile.

Letters from Egypt

Author: Florence Nightingale
Publisher: Grove Press
ISBN: 9780802115324
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 223

Book Description
A collection of letters written during a journey to Egypt describing the author's views on the country and its history and people

The Lived Nile

Author: Jennifer Derr
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781503608672
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Book Description
In October 1902, the reservoir of the first Aswan Dam filled, and Egypt's relationship with the Nile River forever changed. Flooding villages of historical northern Nubia and filling the irrigation canals that flowed from the river, the perennial Nile not only reshaped agriculture and the environment, but also Egypt's colonial economy and forms of subjectivity. Jennifer L. Derr follows the engineers, capitalists, political authorities, and laborers who built a new Nile River through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The river helped to shape the future of technocratic knowledge, and the bodies of those who inhabited rural communities were transformed through the environmental intimacies of their daily lives. At the root of this investigation lies the notion that the Nile is not a singular entity, but a realm of practice and a set of temporally, spatially, and materially specific relations that structured experiences of colonial economy. From the microscopic to the regional, the local to the imperial, The Lived Nile recounts the history and centrality of the environment to questions of politics, knowledge, and the lived experience of the human body itself.

The Cross and the River

Author: Ḥagai Erlikh
Publisher: Lynne Rienner Publishers
ISBN: 9781555879709
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Book Description
The ongoing Egyptian-Ethiopian dispute over the Nile waters is potentially one of the most difficult issues on the current international agenda, central to the very life of the two countries. Analyzing the context of the dispute across a span of more than a thousand years, The Cross and the River delves into the heart of both countries' identities and cultures. Erlich deftly weaves together three themes: the political relationship between successive Ethiopian and Egyptian regimes; the complex connection between the Christian churches in the two countries; and the influence of the Nile river system on Ethiopian and Egyptian definitions of national identity and mutual perceptions of the Other. Drawing on a vast range of sources, his study is key to an understanding of a bond built on both interdependence and conflict.

We're Sailing Down the Nile

Author: Laurie Krebs
Publisher: Barefoot Books
ISBN: 1846860407
Category : Egypt
Languages : en
Pages : 52

Book Description
As the riverboat sails down the Nile River, remnants of Egypt's long history and aspects of its present culture are revealed on its banks. Includes end notes with additional information about ancient Egyptian culture.

American Travelers on the Nile

Author: Andrew Oliver
Publisher: American University in Cairo Press
ISBN: 1617976326
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 344

Book Description
The Treaty of Ghent signed in 1814, ending the War of 1812, allowed Americans once again to travel abroad. Medical students went to Paris, artists to Rome, academics to Göttingen, and tourists to all European capitals. More intrepid Americans ventured to Athens, to Constantinople, and even to Egypt. Beginning with two eighteenth-century travelers, this book then turns to the 25-year period after 1815 that saw young men from East Coast cities, among them graduates of Harvard, Yale, and Columbia, traveling to the lands of the Bible and of the Greek and Latin authors they had first known as teenagers. Naval officers off ships of the Mediterranean squadron visited Cairo to see the pyramids. Two groups went on business, one importing steam-powered rice and cotton mills from New York, the other exporting giraffes from the Kalahari Desert for wild animal shows in New York. Drawing on unpublished letters and diaries together with previously neglected newspaper accounts, as well as a handful of published accounts, this book offers a new look at the early American experience in Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean world. More than thirty illustrations complement the stories told by the travelers themselves.

Ghost of the Nile

Author: Veronica Scott
Publisher: Veronica Scott
ISBN: 0989590399
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 204

Book Description