This book is intended as a commented summary of some of the major trends and most important features that can be encountered when analysing ancient Egyptian society of the Old Kingdom. We have to bear in mind that around 3000 BCE one of the first centralised states in our recorded history rose, and the Old Kingdom represents certainly one of its apogees. Moreover, there is hardly any comparable society that left behind such a wealth of archaeological and literary evidence, a welcome companion for our journey back in time. The goal for writing this book was to outline general trends in the history of the non-royal tomb development of the period. The reason is rather simple and straightforward: ancient Egyptians considered the tomb to be their afterlife residence for eternity. In the afterlife they replicated the life they experienced during the lifetime. Thus the tomb architecture, decoration, inscriptions and equipment paradoxically represent a major tool for our understanding of the everyday life of the ancient Egyptians and enable a better comprehension of the development and dynamics of the Old Kingdom. The book is divided into nine chapters covering, step by step, the development of the Egyptian tomb and society from the Predynastic Period to the end of the first six Egyptian dynasties, a lengthy period of time which covers the Early Dynastic and the Old Kingdom periods. These six chapters are accompanied by three additional chapters on religious aspects of the Old Kingdom society, its economy and environment.

The present publication is concerned with the rock art from two sections of the Nile Valley in Lower Nubia surveyed in the scope of the UNESCO-organised salvage campaign by the Czechoslovak Institute of Egyptology (Charles University in Prague). It has two main objects, first to complete the catalogue of the rock art documented or localised in the two sections of the Czechoslovak concession with hitherto unpublished rock-art surfaces and occurrences (both petroglyphs and rock paintings) and, second, to provide a critical revision of the data published in Katalog der Felsbilder aus der Tschechoslowakischen Konzession in Nubien (edited by F. Váhala and P. Červíček, Prag 1999). With a view to presenting the results of the critical revision, made on the basis of the field documentation gathered by the Czechoslovak expedition and deposited in the archive of the Czech Institute of Egyptology (Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague), all rock-art data – both unpublished and published – are arranged in the present volume in a tabular form. Tables 1–4 containing the description and revision of the rock-art data from the two sections of the Czechoslovak concession in a succession from north to south and, as distinct from Katalog, separately for each bank of the Nile, are accompanied by introductory notes on the formation of the corpus, hitherto unpublished distribution maps of the completed and revised corpus, 155 hitherto unpublished black-and-white photographs, and four colour plates with the sheets of the colour scale used for the recording of patina difference or colour value of preserved paints. With the two objects accomplished, the present publication constitutes a kind of manual to the rock-art corpus from the Czechoslovak concession in Lower Nubia and is to be regarded, together with Katalog, as the complete and authoritative source of data for evaluation of the significance of the evidence from the two sections of the Nile Valley in Lower Nubia.

The monograph is the first exhaustive publication of nine shelters with rock paintings documented by the Czechoslovak expedition in Lower Nubia in the scope of the UNESCO-organised salvage campaign in the 1960s. The presentation of each of the painted shelters includes description of the landscape setting and physical characteristics of the rock surfaces, analyses of the thematic, stylistic, syntactic, and technical aspects of the rock art, discussion of the spatial and temporal dynamics of the rock-art surface, and evaluation of the significance of the evidence. The final chapter offers some thought on the overall significance of the rock paintings from the Czechoslovak concession as one of the artistic and cultural expressions of the populations that inhabited Lower Nubia in different periods of the past and as historical documents about their past worlds and lives. Lenka Suková graduated from the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague in 2008. In 2003–2006, she was the Assistant Curator of the Department of Prehistory and Ancient History of the Near East and North Africa of the Náprstek Museum-National Museum in Prague. Since 2007, she has been working in the Czech Institute of Egyptology, Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague where she hs been engaged in research into the history and dynamics of occupation of Eastern Sahara during the Early and Middle Holocene. Since 2009, she is the director of the Institute’s interdisciplinary research project concerned with the prehistoric occupation of Jebel Sabaloka in the Sudan. She is a PhD candidate at the same institute, with a research project focused on the rock art of Northeast Africa in the context of landscape and archaeology.

"Who lives sees much, who travels sees more" . The Arab proverb is an appropriate title for this latest collection of essays published by the Association for the Study of Travel in Egypt and the Near East on its tenth anniversary. The desire to see what lay beyond the familiar landscapes of home shaped the lives of all the travellers discussed here. Their backgrounds and training as artists of one sort or another mean that they responded to what they saw in visual ways - in many cases taking the revelations of their travels home with them to inspire their own work.

The recent renaissance of interest in the history of dress and its cultural importance is celebrated in this collection of interdisciplinary essays. The sixteen contributors present on-going research into the study of the clothed body in ancient Egypt and the Aegean, Classical Greece, Rome and Late Antiquity. Through literary and artistic evidence and film, they discuss how dress articulates and defines an individual within his or her given society, at the same time highlighting common themes in scholarship, methodological differences between disciplines and periods, as well as contrasting definitions of what constitutes the clothed body. Essays discussing Aegean Bronze Age fashions, costume design in filmed biblical epics, clothing in Aristophanic comedy, Greek and Roman female undergarments, the symbolism of the Roman toga, and the spectacle of images of Byzantine dress, are just some of the diverse subjects covered in this study.

The earliest investigations at the ancient city of Meroe were carried out by John Garstang and the University of Liverpool from 1909 onwards. This report on more recent work by a joint Sudanese-Canadian project in 2000 and 2001, reflects greatly on the work of previous investigations at the site, especially those of Garstang, in providing assessments of their work as well as new observations. The season described here consisted of museum research in Khartoum and Toronto as well as fieldwork and investigations at Amun Temple M260, the largest temple in the Kushite kingdom and the largest at Meroe, Mound M712, as well as observations in and around the Royal City. A report on pottery and small finds is given, as well as a catalogue of objects from Garstang's excavations held in museum collections.

Rhind's book on Thebes is unique in that unlike many other Egyptologists of his time, he gives a precise and detailed description of how he excavated the sites, in itself an immense value to the history of archaeology.

A slim but useful study of utilitarian domestic pottery from Ancient Egypt. The author presents scenes involving pots from published Egyptian tombs. The pictures, reproduced in line drawings, show ceramics used in milking, water carrying, bread-making, brewing, wine-making, cooking and consumption. The book also considers the usefulness of tomb-paintings for dating excavated materials.

Presented in both Czech and English this book commemorates work by the Czech Institute of Egyptology in Egypt between 1958 and 1988. The topics covered are: The international UNESCO campaign to save the monuments of Nubia; work at the Mastaba of Ptahshepses at Abusir; work in the South Field at Abusir; an overview of Czech Egyptological Expeditions and a bibliography of Czech Egyptological publications.

This is a classic study into the Egyptians' use of the past, focusing on the pictures and texts common in Ancient Egypt showing groupings of kings. The author discusses the genesis and development of the "king list" tradition, following a tradition over three millennia. After taking a chronological approach to "king lists", annals and day lists from the Old to New Kingdoms, the book focuses on the Aegyptiaca of Manetho, perhaps the first truly 'historical' approach to Egyptian sources written during the early Ptolemaic period.