The Hay archive of Coptic manuscripts consists of seven fragmentary sheets of leather bearing spells for divination, protection, healing, personal advancement, cursing and the satisfaction of sexual desire. Purchased from the heir of the Scottish Egyptologist and draughtsman, Robert Hay (1799–1863), the manuscripts arrived at the British Museum in 1868. Since they were first published in the 1930s, they were understood to be the work of a single copyist writing around AD 600 in the Theban region of Upper Egypt. The present volume has confirmed, nuanced or challenged these assessments on the basis of scientific analysis and close study of the manuscripts. Prompted by the urgent conservation needs of the corpus, this study seeks to provide a model, integrated approach to the publication of ancient texts as archaeological objects by providing a full record of provenance and collection history; scientific analysis; conservation approach and treatment; a new complete edition and translation of the Coptic texts; and an extended discussion of the cultural context of production. Written on poorly processed calf, sheep and goat skin, the manuscripts were copied by multiple non-professional writers in the 8th–9th centuries. Employing a striking combination of ancient Egyptian, Graeco-Roman, biblical and extra-biblical motifs, their contents represent a Christian milieu making use of the mechanics of earlier ‘magical’ practice in a period well after the arrival of Islam.

This fifth volume of Abu Salabikh Excavations is the definitive account of the excavation of two large domestic residences at the Early Dynastic III city at Abu Salabikh, in south Iraq 15 km to the north of Nippur. It describes and illustrates the houses and their contents, in particular the intramural burials, with coverage of the human osteology, and botanical, zoological and micromorphological studies.

This fifth volume of Abu Salabikh Excavations is the definitive account of the excavation of two large domestic residences at the Early Dynastic III city at Abu Salabikh, in south Iraq 15 km to the north of Nippur. It describes and illustrates the houses and their contents, in particular the intramural burials, with coverage of the human osteology, and botanical, zoological and micromorphological studies.

This fifth volume of Abu Salabikh Excavations is the definitive account of the excavation of two large domestic residences at the Early Dynastic III city at Abu Salabikh, in south Iraq 15 km to the north of Nippur. It describes and illustrates the houses and their contents, in particular the intramural burials, with coverage of the human osteology, and botanical, zoological and micromorphological studies.

Hugo de Reede (1929-2019), artist and archaeological illustrator has worked in Syria for many years. Gripped by the Gilgamesh Epos and the philosophy narrated in the epic, he created a pictorial book, re-telling the account of Gilgamesh and the eternal mystery of death. The style of drawing in the book suits the regional art in a remarkable manner and with a humorous touch that is fitting for the region’s storytelling tradition.

Kelly Eads joined the 101st Airborne Division soon after 9/11, his experience reflecting the patriotism and commitment of so many young men and women who responded to the attack. He deployed to Iraq twice with the 2nd Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment. Early in their deployment to Iraq, the 2nd Battalion brought the fight directly to the enemy by setting up patrol bases in the local areas where they lived and operated. Soon they built a reputation for themselves, becoming known to the enemy as the Black Hearts—The 502nd had been distinguished on the battlefield by black hearts on their helmets since World War II. Their Scout Platoon became known as Painted Guns due to their practice of camouflaging their rifles. During Eads’ deployments, the battalion would experience thousands of Improvised Explosive Devices and firefights. They would spend countless hours in blistering 120-degree desert heat, controlling roads and preventing enemy freedom of movement; and would dedicate months to hunting enemy mortar teams and terror cells. With the help of Dan Morgan, an Infantry officer who deployed multiple times to Iraq and Afghanistan as a commander and operations officer, Eads takes the reader on a rollercoaster of combat experiences during the hunt for the most violent terrorist in Iraq, Abū Muṣʻab Zarqāwī, bringing to life the painstaking and horrid details of combat in a sectarian war. He tells the story of the soldiers’ camaraderie, built through adversity, and the love of family that sustained them.

Cyprus was a thriving and densely populated late antique province. Contrary to what used to be thought, the Arab raids of the mid-seventh century did not abruptly bring the island’s prosperity to an end. Recent research instead highlights long-lasting continuity in both urban and rural contexts. This volume brings together historians and archaeologists working on diverse aspects of Cyprus between the sixth and eighth centuries. They discuss topics as varied as rural prosperity, urban endurance, artisanal production, civic and private religion and maritime connectivity. The role of the imperial administration and of the Church is touched upon in several contributions. Other articles place Cyprus back into its wider Mediterranean context. Together, they produce a comprehensive impression of the quality of life on the island in the long late antiquity.

Ancient Egyptian elites invested immense cultural and economic efforts in preparing for their afterlives. However, the diversity of choices open to them is often overlooked. These choices included tomb size, tomb location, and architectural design, as well as tomb decoration, and the selection of certain grave gifts. Their choices depended on financial means, but also on contemporary fashion, among other factors. Ancient sites were visited by the living to commemorate and rejuvenate human ancestors and the gods, as individual acts or as part of large-scale processions. They also visited cemeteries because of new building activities, or to visit already-ancient monuments. The daily interactions of the living with their ancestors and gods are traceable in the evidence of lived religious practices, the transmission of texts and images, and the processes which shaped the landscape. Older monuments and stories remained accessible, and the ongoing use of the site created a palimpsest landscape, showing the results of millennia of human activity. These results of past activities could hold special significance for later generations, but new meanings often supplanted older interpretations.Building on the success of Perspectives on Lived Religion, Perspective on Lived Religion II presents the results of a conference held in Cairo, September 29th – October 1st 2019, and kindly funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) Vidi Talent Scheme, as part of the Leiden University research project “The Walking Dead at Saqqara: The Making of a Cultural Geography”. The papers presented here are written by both well-established and more recent Egyptologists, and examine examples of human agency at various sites in ancient Egypt, such as Saqqara, Thebes, Abydos, and Pi-Ramesse. These case studies examine which traditions were followed, disputed, and negotiated by whom and where in ancient Egypt, as well as discussing the modern perception of some of these traditions.

The most significant and by far largest collections of Zaydi manuscripts are housed by the many public and private libraries of Yemen, an endangered cultural heritage tradition, currently at risk due to the conflict and warfare in Yemen. The contributions brought together in this volume address a wide spectrum of aspects concerning Yemeni manuscript cultures, with some focusing on their history and present state within Yemen and others discussing the collections of manuscripts of Yemeni provenance in Europe and elsewhere.

This volume combines the most up-to-date discoveries and perspectives of Near Eastern Neolithic lithics by leading international archaeologists. It presents the proceedings of the 9th International Conference of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic Chipped and Ground Stone Industries of the Near East, hosted at the University of Tokyo, Japan in 2019 (PPN9-Tokyo). The book places emphasis on regional perspectives to evaluate the Near Eastern Neolithic. Current research indicates that the earliest farming societies of the Near East developed in interaction with neighbouring hunter-gatherer societies, that either coexisted with them for long periods or soon assimilated to the Near Eastern farmers. Understanding these contrasting processes sheds new light on identifying the Neolithisation practices of the 'core' regions in the Near East itself. The 39 papers in this volume include contributions on the Iranian Zagros, the Caucasus, and Central Asia, a region whose Neolithic archaeological records are far less well understood but which enrich our understanding of the first farming societies of the Near East.

Tell Ahmar – also known as Masuwari, Til Barsib and Kar-Shalmaneser in the first millennium BCE – was first inhabited in the sixth millennium during the Ubaid period, and progressively developed to become a regional centre, and in the eighth and seventh centuries, a provincial capital of the Assyrian empire. Remains from the third millennium (a temple and a funerary complex), the second millennium (an administrative complex and well-preserved houses) and the first millennium (an Assyrian palace and elite residences) are particularly impressive. The book offers an archaeological and historical synthesis of the results obtained by the excavations of François Thureau-Dangin (1929–1931) and by the more recent excavations of the universities of Melbourne (1988–1999) and Liège (2000–2010). It presents a comprehensive and diachronic view of the evolution of the site, which, by its position on the Euphrates at an important crossroads of ancient communication routes, was at the heart of a game of cultural and political interference between Mesopotamia, the Mediterranean world and Asia Minor.

With America's War on Terror and the subsequent democracy experiments in Afghanistan and Iraq having turned into geopolitical disasters, the US military campaign in alliance with the Kurdish forces in Syria is one of the few success stories. Military experts and politicians in Washington, DC, judge the intervention against ISIS in Syria as the nation's most successful campaign since WWII, based on the overwhelming military victory, the functioning Kurdish civilian governing structures that followed the fighting, the extremely light military footprint and the strong link to Kurdish partners many political analysts. However, since neither these experts nor many journalists were on the ground during the fighting, they struggle to explain exactly how this particular operation turned into a just war. The authors, however, were there. Between the three of them, they fought for over two years with the Kurdish forces. They participated in all the large Kurdish operations against the Islamic State between late 2014 and mid-2016. The endured a muddy archaic trench warfare, witnessed the first waves of decisive US and British airstrikes against ISIS, and experienced the impact America had on the battlefield. Later, when American, British and French Special Forces were deployed at the frontlines, the authors worked closely with those teams when they evacuated hundreds of wounded from the battlefield together. Based on the authors' unique insights, this book analyses America's war in Syria and structures the intervention into different phases including the secretive build up and the ultimate destruction of the ISIS Caliphate.

During the April 2004 fights throughout Iraq, most media attention was focused on the city of Fallujah. However, at the same time, out on the border with Syria in and around the city of Husaybah, fighting was equally intense. This book tells the story of that period through many first-person accounts of intense fighting in the town of Husaybah, Iraq, during. It is based on interviews with Marines at all levels of the fight, from battalion commander Lieutenant Colonel Matt Lopez, USMC, to infantrymen and squad leaders. When the Lima Company commander Captain Richard Gannon (Call sign Lima 6) was killed on entry to an enemy-held building, the company’s executive officer, Lieutenant Dominique Neal (Lima 5) informed his Marines that he had assumed command with the radio message, “Lima 5 is now Lima 6.” It also details the heroic actions of Corporal Jason Dunham who saved the Marines around him by covering an enemy grenade with his body.

The Second Nagorno-Karabakh war – fought between Armenia and Azerbaijan between September 24 and November 10, 2020 – was the first war in history won primarily by unmanned systems. This 44-day war resulted in a decisive military victory for Azerbaijan. Armenia was outfought, outnumbered, and outspent and lost even though they controlled the high ground in a mountainous region that favored traditional defense. Azerbaijan's alliance with Turkey, and close technological support from Israel, strategically isolated Armenia. In addition, Turkey's posturing influenced the Russians not to intervene to support Armenia. That Azerbaijan attacked Armenia during the pandemic was an additional factor. The fact that Azerbaijan won the war is not extraordinary, considering the correlation of forces arrayed against Armenia. What is exceptional is that this was the first modern war primarily decided by unmanned weapons. In this war the Turkish-made BAYRAKTAR TB2 Unmanned Air Combat Vehicle (UCAV) and the Israeli-made HAROP Loitering Munition (LM) dominated the fighting and provided Azerbaijan with a war-winning advantage.

This book explores the interaction between animals, plants, and humans in ancient Egypt. It draws together different aspects of the bioarchaeology of Egypt: flora, fauna, and human remains. These come from sites throughout the country from Alexandria to Aswan, as well as material from museum basements. The material presented here includes the results of new and previously unpublished excavations in the Delta and Thebes, in-depth studies of different species of animal mummies, an analysis of animal cults, tentative identifications of wild dogs in Egyptian art, a variety of diseases from which the ancient Egyptians suffered, studies on human remains using traditional as well as state-of-the-art technologies, and the different foods that formed the diet of the ancient Egyptians. The studies blend traditional methodologies, often deployed in novel ways, such as examining the pelage of lions, as well as new 3D technologies used in the analyses of bioarchaeological material. The results of these studies deepen our knowledge of ancient Egypt, its inhabitants, and their interaction with their environment. The present volume is the proceedings of the Conference on the Bioarchaeology of Ancient Egypt & the Second International Symposium on Animals in Ancient Egypt (Cairo, 2019).

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.