Czech Institute of Egyptology
The Czech Institute of Egyptology was founded in 1958, as a successor to the Egyptological Seminar at the Faculty of Arts of the Charles University in Prague. Its founding father was Frantisek Lexa, an expert in Late Egyptian writing. The first fieldwork undertaken by the new Institute in the 1960s was in Nubia, where Prague Egyptologists took an active part in the rescue of Nubian sites and artefacts from dam construction. The Nubian series of Institute publications, published mainly in the 1970s and 1980s, are particularly important as they are the sole record of sites that are no longer accessible to researchers. The Institute started work at its most famous excavation site, Abusir, just after beginning its Nubian campaign. Abusir, the northernmost part of the Saqqara necropolis, has produced an unexpected richness of material, including a royal cemetery of 5th Dynasty pyramids, a Necropolis of officials dating from the 4th to 6th Dynasties, and Saite-Persian shaft tombs. The excavations are still continuing, with only a few months break every year during the intense heat of the summer months. Studies at the Abusir necropolis are making huge contributions to our knowledge of the society and culture of the Memphite region. Recently, a new area has been added to the Czech archaeological permit area - a zone in Western desert, in the area of Hayez, Bahariya oasis, and work is starting there. A range of archaeological works at the site are published in the Abusir series, which now extends to number VII. The archaeological reports on Abusir are not the only part of their publishing activities – these include also broader syntheses and future plans include a special series devoted to the heritage of Ancient and Islamic Egypt. A short series will also report on the Hayez expedition. Future plans also include a dissertation series. The future looks bright for Czech Egyptology, now celebrating over 50 years of scholarship. The recent merging of the Institute with the National Centre for Egyptology has brought the financial and scholarly resources of the discipline together and, in the next few years, it is hoped that the program of publications will become ever larger and more prestigious.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 460
ISBN: 9788076710962
Pub Date: 24 Apr 2024
Description:
This book investigates ancient Egyptian imperialism in Syria and the origin of the Aarna diplomacy at the time of the 8th Dynasty, during the earliest phase of globalization in world history, the Late Bronze Age, by addressing theories and debates in the fields of Global History, International Relations, and political science, and with the inclusion of comparisons from Classics as well as modern and contemporary history. Contrary to Egyptological consensus, this book argues, that the primacy of the Levantine cities in international relations, diplomacy, and global networks prevented the creation of an Egyptian empire in the northern Levant, and forced the pharaonic monarchy to participate in a diplomatic system of foreign origin. Therefore, this study offers an Egyptological perspective on the problematic nexus between imperialism and globalization and argues that Late Bronze Age globalization imposed limits on the imperialism that manifested in Egypt with the Amarna diplomacy.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 344
ISBN: 9788076710955
Pub Date: 22 Apr 2024
Series: Abusir Monographs
Description:
The second part of the monograph on the results of the archaeological research of Werkaureś mastaba (AC 26) and its surroundings in central Abusir focuses on the context dating back to the First Intermediate Period the Middle Kingdom, the New Kingdom and the first millenium BC. The focus of the work is on analyses concerning the secondary burial that developed in the area of tomb AC 26and adjacent tombs of AC 32 during the Third Intermediate Period and the Late Period. A large number of finds and ecofacts were discovered and are comprehensively discussed in this multidisciplinary publication of eight chapters.
Along with archaeological and anthropological analyses, analyses of collected samples, using palynological, botanical, zoological, xylotomic, and entomological methods are an importand part of the monograph. The publication presents conclusions concerning the development of the Abusir necropolis after the end of the Old Kingdom Period.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 519
ISBN: 9788076710887
Pub Date: 30 Dec 2022
Description:
In the Festschrift "Knowledge and Memory" notions knowledge and memory cores and memory correspond perfectly to the central focus of the religious and magical spells from the Late Period shaft tombs in Abusir. A subject that has always been close to the heart and mind of Ladislav Bareš. A collection of thirty-three papers, written by former students, numerous colleagues and friends, are hence devoted to themes closely aligned with Professor Bareš lifelong interest: the Memphite necropolis throughout the ages, and the Late Period (and beyond) throughout the whole of Egypt.
Contributions are in English, French and German.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 200
ISBN: 9788076710535
Pub Date: 28 Jul 2022
Description:
This volume offers a valuable resource by compiling and interpreting high-resolution satellite images of all Old and Middle Kingdom pyramid sites in Egypt. The sites included in this Atlas represent to a large degree the principal sites of the third- through the thirteenth-Dynasty. Their particular characteristics mirror the specific periods of Egyptian history, providing a fascinating window into the incredible story of ancient Egypt.
Sites covered include (starting in the north): Abu Rawash, Giza, Zawiyet el-Aryan, Abusir, Saqqara, Dahshur, Mazghuna, Lisht, Meidum, Lahun, Hawara and Abydos. Also featured is the site of Abu Ghurob, with the two sun temples of Userkaf and Nyuserra of the fifth-Dynasty and the so-called minor step pyramids dating from the late third- to the early fourth-Dynasty. These start in Seila at the northeastern edge of the Faiyum Oasis and include – proceeding those of Zawyet Sultan – Nubt (Naqada), Abydos (Sinki), Hierakonpolis (el-Kula), Edfu (Ghonemeia) and Elephantine. The individual sites are characterised on the background of their local topography and changing nature of their development over time as reflected by the position of individual monuments, including the principal pyramids of the Old and Middle Kingdom. Each each site provides a different story in terms of its structure and content, reflecting the simple fact that every site developed under different conditions, in different local setting, had its own internal logics, its pace and its genuine characteristics. Each site also reflects a specific historical situation and tells a different story of its development and rediscovery. Most pyramid fields are increasingly more intensively endangered by modern development and locally-dominated neglect of the need for their preservation. It is strongly believed that the latest technological advances, including the satellite imaging in Egyptology, will ultimately translate into their systematic use in sites’ protection and management, site and landscape analysis and long-term strategies for both ongoing and future excavation and survey projects in Egypt.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 428
ISBN: 9788076710511
Pub Date: 25 Apr 2022
Description:
35 contributions by scholars, reflecting the widespread interest of researchers into a wide variety of different to-pics related to the Memphite necropolis. Individual contributions include some ofthe latest results of archaeological explorations, new interpretations of archaeological evidence within the framework of social and environmental development and climate change, new approaches to long-known texts and inscriptions, the application of modern computer-based analysis of the society of the day, as well as newly understood historical, social and landscape connotations of some sites and monuments.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 580
ISBN: 9788076710481
Pub Date: 25 Apr 2022
Description:
The first part of this book concentrates on developments and transformations observable in New Kingdom private tombs commissioned by non-royal individuals in the three main cemeteries of the time – Amarna, Thebes, and Saqqara. The second part of the volume centers on various strategies of adaptation and modification as reflected on the level of the priesthoods and the design of the temple program (architecture, text, and image) during the Ptolemaic and Roman period.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 200
ISBN: 9788073089863
Pub Date: 15 May 2021
Description:
This volume presents interpreting of agency of individual officials in in different periods of ancient Egyptian history. Their activity and careers are observed using different methods different methods of complex network of more general trends operating the society at a given stage of its evolution. We are confident that this is one of the most promising and proven ways to gain deeper insights into day-to-day lives of the people of the past.
In recent years, this research approach has evolved independently at several institutions exploring ancient Egypt.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 471
ISBN: 9788073089917
Pub Date: 15 May 2021
Description:
The spread of cuneiform writing from its Mesopotamian heartland to the peripheries during the second half of the third, and especially in the second millennium BC, represents an important historical and cultural phenomenon. From the beginning of the second millennium BC cuneiform writing became the privileged means through which the administrations of these "peripheral" centers recorded economic transactions. These documents (taxes, rations, sales, etc.
) shed a fascinating light on the economic system in these regions. Thousands of administrative documents allow us to follow the process of the development of economic thought that, starting from Mesopotamia, was taken and adapted to specific administrative realities throughout the wider regions of the Ancient Near East. The 19 essays collected here elucidate the emergence, transmission, and interaction of economic structures and the management of resources in time and space. Through a diachronic study, the volume identifies similarities, differences, and adaptations in the economic management of resources and taxation in the Ancient Near East (third - second millennium BC).
Format: Hardback
Pages: 208
ISBN: 9788073089986
Pub Date: 15 May 2021
Series: Abusir Monographs
Description:
The book presents the reader the richest corpus of Old Kingdom royal funerary domains. The core of the book represents catalogue of funerary domains retrieved during recent archaeological works by Egyptian team at Sahura’s causeway and of related pehou regions. The introductory chapters provide the reader with the context and the overview of other known contemporary domains of this kind.
The noc-clusing chapters then discuss the nature and location of pehou regions as well as economic significance of royal domains with regards to the new finds from Sahura’s causeway.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 360
ISBN: 9788073089719
Pub Date: 15 Nov 2020
Illustrations: 111 tab,78 fig + mp; 41 phot. Plates
Description:
The present publication follows vol. I from 1984 - results of a comprehensive archaeological investigation of two tumulus cemeteries of Late Roman and Early Byzantine Period explored by the Czechoslovak Institute of Egyptology in the scope of the UNESCO-organized salvage campaign of Nubua by the waters of the High Aswan Dam. This vol.
II evaluates the human skeletal remains of 558 individuals from the cemetery at Wadi Qitna and 35 individuals from the cemetery at Kalabsha-South. The volume touches upon the complex of saocial and ethnic processes taking place in the region between Egypt and Nubia.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 308
ISBN: 9788076710528
Pub Date: 10 Feb 2020
Description:
The catalogue in Czech and English accompanied the unique exhibition Kings of the Sun that took place at the National Museum in Prague between September 1st 2020 and September 31st 2021 and mapped over a century of archaeological exploration of the site of Abusir by Egyptian, German and Czech (until 1990 Czechoslovak) mission. It contains 139 entries on almost 300 objects dating between the Early Dynastic and Ptolemaic Periods, including examples from the royal burial equipment of King Raneferef from the pyramid cemetery, sculptures of the priest Nefer and Princess Sheretnebty from Abusir south, as well as items from the Saite-Persian shaft tombs. The objects tell a story of the ancient Egyptian civilization and of the people who formed it, and through them, the catalogue maps the existence and development of the site of Abusir for almost three millennia.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 435
ISBN: 9788073089283
Pub Date: 05 Dec 2019
Description:
The main objective of the conference was to enhance our understanding of “foreignness” in ancient societies between the end of the Chalcolithic period and the end of the Late Bronze Age. This book collects some of the twenty most significant contributions presented at the conference. Some authors decided to approach the discussion from a theoretical perspective, or to present and discuss theoretical frameworks that could be used to explore at least some elements underlying the concept of “foreignness”.
Others investigated sociocultural dimension involved in the presence of foreigners, or in their interactions with local communities. Cases from Egypt, Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and the Levant, covering the whole of the Bronze Age have been discussed. The wide range of perspectives, and their combination within the frame of the conference often stimulated that multidisciplinary dialogue that was the primary aim of this third edition of Crossroads.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 387
ISBN: 9788073089276
Pub Date: 24 Oct 2019
Description:
In 2019 Charles University, its Faculty of Arts, and the Czech Institute of Egyptology are celebrating the hundredth birthday of Czech Egyptology. It is an important centenary not only for us, but for archaeology globally. For many years now Czech Egyptologists have been among world leaders in the field, making major breakthroughs (most recently the discovery of the tomb of the priest Kaires) – and helping to set new international research trends.
This book presents the most important discoveries of Czech Egyptologists and the range and variety of their activities.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 192
ISBN: 9788073089160
Pub Date: 05 Oct 2019
Description:
A Report concerned with military reliefs in the Great Temple at Gebel Barkal in Nubia, the present Sudan (B 500), important battle scenes in the Great Temple's inner hall (B 502) and the outer one (B 501).
Format: Hardback
Pages: 560
ISBN: 9788073088965
Pub Date: 10 Jul 2019
Illustrations: Several photos, tables, sheets and plates
Description:
Sun temples of the Fifth Dynasty are an unparalleled monument of ancient Egypt, characterized the Central part of the Old Kingdom considered as the apex of the solar cult and theology.Original architectural shape and ideological influence on the later phases of Egyptian history are far from clear as well as their cultic, ideological and symbolic relationship with the contemporary pyramids and with what is considered to be the original place of rise and diffusion of the solar cult in AE, the city of Heliopolis. Six temples were built in a quite limited time span in the middle of the Third Millennium BC but only two have been discovered so far.
The volume collects all the available archaeological and textual evidences, including an in-depth reconstruction of the original decoration of temples.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 574
ISBN: 9788073087678
Pub Date: 30 Nov 2018
Series: Opera Facultatis Philosophicae Universitatis Carolinae Pragensis
Description:
The book presents the contributions offered to Professor Jan Bouzek at the conference “Contacts, Migrations and Climate Change“ in honour of his 80th birthday held in May 2015 in Prague. The conference goal was not only to honour his exceptional professional achievements but also to create a broad forum for discussion across the archaeology of Europe and the Black Sea, and specifically to include the following topics: The Black Sea Area; The Aegean and Anatolia; Central Europe; Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman; Climate; Celts on the Move; Thrace and its Rulers. Jan Bouzek has been one of the most influential and prolific archaeologists in Europe over the course of his career, with interests spanning climate change, the world of later prehistory in central and eastern Europe, and the archaeology of the Iron Age and Classical world from central Europe, through Bulgaria, to Turkey and the Black Sea area.
The papers in this volume reflect these concerns. The world of ancient Thrace is an important area of interest, especially in view of the excavations at Pistiros (Bulgaria) which he led between 1993 and 2015. Contributions relating to the prehistoric Aegean, to Bronze and Iron Age central Europe, to the Classical and Hellenistic Balkans, and to the ancient Pontic world, are among those which reflect the many interests of this wide-ranging and learned - but very human - scholar, and the numerous friendships he formed over the whole of Europe and beyond.
