"Human beings," the acclaimed Egyptologist Jan Assmann writes, "are the animals that have to live with the knowledge of their death, and culture is the world they create so they can live with that knowledge." In his new book, Assmann explores images of death and of death rites in ancient Egypt to provide startling new insights into the particular character of the civilization as a whole. Drawing on the unfamiliar genre of the death liturgy, he arrives at a remarkably comprehensive view of the religion of death in ancient Egypt. Assmann describes in detail nine different images of death: death as the body being torn apart, as social isolation, the notion of the court of the dead, the dead body, the mummy, the soul and ancestral spirit of the dead, death as separation and transition, as homecoming, and as secret. Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt also includes a fascinating discussion of rites that reflect beliefs about death through language and ritual.

This comprehensive three-volume set marks the publication of the proceedings of the Eighth International Congress of Egyptologists, held in Cairo in 2000, the largest Congress since the inaugural meeting in 1979. Organized thematically to reflect the breadth and depth of the material presented at this event, these papers provide a survey of current Egyptological research at the dawn of the twenty-first century. The proceedings include the eight Millennium Debates led by esteemed Egyptologists, addressing key issues in the field, as well as nearly every paper presented at the Congress. The 275 papers cover the whole spectrum of Egyptological research. Grouped under the themes of archaeology, history, religion, language, conservation, and museology, and written in English, French, and German, these contributions together form the most comprehensive picture of Egyptology today.

The book is the first complete publication of a relatively small but interesting collection of Old Kingdom monuments in the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. Twenty-two pieces are reproduced as black-and-white photographs and line drawings. Among them are two statues, fourteen reliefs and relief fragments, five offering stones and a fragment of an ointment tablet; several objects in museums of Cairo, Copenhagen, and Cambridge belonging to the same people are published as well. Most of these monuments were never published or are known only through books and periodicals in Russian that usually are not available in Egyptological libraries. Although the Hermitage pieces were acquired at antiquities dealers without any documentation, their modern history is traced and in a half of cases either their provenance is reconstructed or related monuments are found. A limited number of monuments allowed the author to discuss them to a much greater extent than it is common in museum publications and, thus, the book in spite of its structure of a catalogue virtually is a detailed study of various problems of Old Kingdom history and ideology.

The decorated tombs of the Egyptian Old Kingdom offer detailed knowledge of a society that in all probability was the first nation state in history. The system of dating these monuments presented here builds on the work of previous scholars. In this volume the author explains how the dating method was devised.

This study suggests, through investigations of the tombs in the necropolis of Giza, that economic decline attributed to the collapse of the Old Kingdom had already started in the early dynastic period.

This student-friendly introduction to the archaeology of ancient Egypt guides readers from the Paleolithic to the Greco-Roman periods, and has now been updated to include recent discoveries and new illustrations. • Superbly illustrated with photographs, maps, and site plans, with additional illustrations in this new edition • Organized into 11 chapters, covering: the history of Egyptology and Egyptian archaeology; prehistoric and pharaonic chronology and the ancient Egyptian language; geography, resources, and environment; and seven chapters organized chronologically and devoted to specific archaeological sites and evidence • Includes sections on salient topics such as the constructing the Great Pyramid at Giza and the process of mummification