A gripping, in-depth account of the 2011 Egyptian revolution, through the eyes of its youthful vanguard

January 25, 2011, was a watershed moment for Egypt and a transformative experience for the young men and women who changed the course of their nation's history. Tahrir's Youth tells the story of the organized youth behind the mass uprising that brought about the spectacular collapse of the Mubarak regime. Who were these activists? What did they want? How did the movement they unleashed shape them as it unfolded, and why did it ultimately fall short of its goals?

Rusha Latif follows the trajectory of the movement from the perspective of the Revolutionary Youth Coalition (RYC), a key front forged in Tahrir Square during the early days of the revolt. Drawing on firsthand testimonies and her own direct experience, she offers insight into the motives, hopes, strategies, successes, failures, and disillusionments of the movement's leaders. Her account details the challenges these activists faced as they attempted to steer the movement they had set in motion and highlights the factors leading to their struggle's defeat, despite its initial promise.

Tahrir's Youth questions the belief that Egypt's revolution was spontaneous and leaderless. Timely and necessary, this study not only illuminates the uprising's leadership dynamics but also demonstrates the need for imagining new modes of revolutionary organizing for the twenty-first century.

An innovative account of the lives and times of the 'warrior king' Thutmose III, and the female pharaoh Hatshepsut, by renowned Egyptologist Aidan Dodson

Thutmose III and Hatshepsut are among the best-known figures in Egyptian history. Thutmose has been called the Napoleon of ancient Egypt, during whose reign Egypt's armies penetrated deep into northern Syria and consolidated Egyptian dominion over much of Sudan. Hatshepsut, one of the handful of female pharaohs, also took to the battlefield, but is best known today for a great trading expedition, down the Red Sea coast to the mysterious land of Punt.

At first, Hatshepsut served simply as regent for her young nephew-stepson Thutmose, but subsequently the two shared the throne of Egypt as co-pharaohs for over a decade. Later, as sole king, Thutmose devoted much of the rest of his life to military matters and large-scale building works, continuing the work of Hatshepsut that created much of the core of the great temple of Karnak. During the very last years of his life, Thutmose launched an attack on the memory of Hatshepsut, with most of her images destroyed. Yet, some four centuries later, Thutmose III and Hatshepsut were still remembered together as great figures of the past, whose conception of pharaonic kingship served as the model for later rulers, into the eighth century BC.

This book, illustrated in full color, traces what we know about the lives and times of Thutmose and Hatshepsut, and the monuments they built to guarantee their afterlives. It then explores their posthumous reputations in ancient times, and ends with the story of how the two pharaohs emerged from the mists of time during the nineteenth century AD, to resume their places in history.

David Roberts, one of the most skilled landscape artists of his time, set out for Egypt in 1838, where he made countless sketches of the most remarkable sites and monuments during the course of his eleven-month journey through Egypt, Sinai, and the Levant.

Superb lithographs made from his work, first published between 1846 and 1848, are richly reproduced here in resplendent color, along with Roberts's diary accounts of his travels along the Nile Valley from Alexandria to the fabulous Abu Simbel temples. Each illustration is accompanied by a photograph showing the same view more than 150 years later.

Fabio Bourbon's lucid essay introduces anew this nineteenth-century fine artist and contextualizes his images for the modern reader.

A full-color guide to the monuments and landscape of Upper Egypt, now fully revised and updated by leading Egyptologist Aidan Didson

Luxor stands on the site of ancient Thebes, Egypt's opulent New Kingdom capital. It encompasses the spectacular temples of Luxor and Karnak on the east bank of the Nile, and on the west bank the vast necropolis, which includes the Colossi of Memnon, the famed Ramesseum, Queen Hatshepsut's magnificent funerary temple, and the Valley of the Kings, riddled with royal tombs, among them the fabled resting place of Tutankhamun. The splendor and profusion of pharaonic monuments at Luxor justifies its reputation as the greatest outdoor museum in the world.

Reaching beyond Luxor, this book also covers all the major sites of Upper Egypt, including Abydos, Dendera, Esna, Edfu, and Kom Ombo. Special attention is given to Aswan, one of the most beautiful places in Egypt, with its nearby island temple of Isis at Philae. The climax of this informed and richly illustrated book comes with the remarkable temples at Abu Simbel, with their colossal figures of Ramesses II and his lovely wife Nefertari cut from the living rock.

This edition, now fully revised and updated by leading Egyptologist Aidan Dodson, and presented in a brand new design and easily portable format, is the perfect companion for visitors to Upper Egypt's famed sites and monuments.

Death, burial, and the afterlife were as important to the ancient Egyptians as how they lived. This well-illustrated book explores all aspects of death in ancient Egypt, including beliefs of the afterlife, mummification, the protection of the body, tombs and their construction and decoration, funerary goods, and the funeral itself. It also addresses the relationship between the living and the dead, and the magico-religious interaction of these two in ancient Egyptian culture. Salima Ikram's own experience with experimental mummification and funerary archaeology lends the book many completely original and provocative insights.

World-renowned archaeologist Zahi Hawass weaves a spellbinding narrative about how the pyramids were built and why, new in paperback

Nearly five thousand years ago, the fourth dynasty of Egypt's Old Kingdom reigned over a highly advanced civilization. Believed to be gods, the royal family lived amid colossal palaces and temples built to honor them and their deified ancestors.

In Mountains of the Pharaohs, Zahi Hawass brings these extraordinary historical figures to life, detailing a soap opera-like saga complete with murder, incest, and the triumphant ascension to the throne of one of only four queens ever to rule Egypt. It was during this dynasty that the magnificent pyramids of Giza were built. These monuments attest not only to the dynasty's supreme power, but also to the engineering expertise and architectural sophistication that flourished under its rule.

Hawass tells the complete story of the pyramids, weaving archaeological data with a history of Egypt's powerful pharaohs, and argues that the pyramids-including the Great Pyramid of Khufu, the only one of the Seven Wonders of the World still standing-were built by skilled craftsmen who took great pride in their work.

Illustrated with black-and-white photographs and drawings, Mountains of the Pharaohs is a compelling account of one of civilization's greatest achievements.

Judging from the evidence available from depictions of daily life on tombs and in historical texts, the ancient Egyptians were just as enthusiastic about good food and generous hospitality as are their descendants today. Magda Mehdawy and Amr Hussein have done extensive research on the cultivation, gathering, preparation, and presentation of food in ancient Egypt and have developed nearly a hundred recipes that will be perfectly recognizable to anyone familiar with modern Egyptian food.

Beautifully illustrated with scenes from tomb reliefs, objects and artifacts in museum exhibits, and modern photographs, the recipes are accompanied by explanatory material that describes the ancient home and kitchen, cooking vessels and methods, table manners and etiquette, banquets, beverages, and ingredients. Traditional feasts and religious occasions with their own culinary traditions are described, including some that are still celebrated today. A glossary of ingredients and place names provides a useful guide to unfamiliar terms.

Funerary datasets are the chief source of social history in Egyptology, and the numerous tombs, coffins, Books of the Dead, and mummies of the Twentieth and Twenty-first Dynasties have not been fully utilized as social documents, mostly because the data of this time period is scattered and difficult to synthesize. This culmination of fifteen years of coffin study analyzes coffins and other funerary equipment of elites from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-second Dynasties to provide essential windows into social strategies and adaptations employed during the Bronze Age collapse and subsequent Iron Age reconsolidation.

Many Twentieth to Twenty-second Dynasty coffins show evidence of reuse from other, older coffins, as well as obvious marks where gilding or inlay have been removed. Innovative vignettes painted onto coffin surfaces reflect new religious strategies and coping mechanisms within this time of crisis, while advances in mummification techniques reveal an Egyptian anxiety about long-term burial without coffins as a new style of stuffed and painted mummy was developed for the wealthy. It was in the context of necropolis insecurity, economic crisis, and group burial in reused and unpainted chambers that a complex, polychrome coffin style emerged.

The first part of this book focuses on the theory and evidence of coffin reuse, contextualized within the social collapse that characterized the Twentieth and Twenty-first Dynasties. The second part presents photo essays of annotated visual data for over sixty Egyptian coffins from the so-called Royal Caches, most of them from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Illustrated throughout with high-quality images, the line drawings and color and black-and-white photographs are ideal for careful study, especially evidenced in the digital edition, where pages can be enlarged for close examination.

A colorfully illustrated celebration of the classic era of cruising on the Nile, new in paperback

Since Antony and Cleopatra honeymooned on the Nile on a gilded barge, visitors to Egypt have taken to the river as the best way to experience the country's wonders. Early travelers took a dahabiya, an elegant triangular-sailed houseboat, and leisurely meandered from riverside site to site, for three months or more. Then from the late nineteenth century, Thomas Cook of Leicester, England, revolutionized the journey with a fleet of specially built paddle steamers. For the next sixty years these 'floating palaces, ' with their private cabins, and dining, smoking, and viewing salons, red-uniformed dragoman guides, and organized donkey excursions, carried the aristocratic, moneyed, and adventurous of international society of the time.

Using period photography, and colorful vintage posters and advertising material, this book tells the story of the people, the places, and the boats, from pioneering Nile travelers like Amelia Edwards and Lucie Duff Gordon, through to famed later passengers, such as Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Conan Doyle, and, of course, Agatha Christie, whose staging of a death on the Nile only added to the allure.

The paradoxes of nineteenth-century colonialism in the Middle East revealed through the accounts of three working class European travelers to Egypt

This book tells the stories of two French women and a French African man, travelers connected to the Saint-Simonian utopian socialists, who came to work for the Egyptian government in the 1830s. They have been marginalized and excluded from the historical record, because they were women, not part of the colonial elite, or of mixed racial heritage. This history brings them alive through extensive archival research and vibrant storytelling.

There is Suzanne Voilquin, a practicing midwife in Cairo who was involved in left-wing popular politics in Paris and became the editor of one of the first feminist newspapers ever published (1832-34). The second traveler, Thomas Ismayl Urbain, was born in French Guyana, where his mother was born a slave and his father was a French sea captain. Jehan d'Ivray is the pen name of the third traveler, a teenage woman who married an Egyptian studying medicine in France, and traveled with him to Egypt in 1879. She wrote more than twenty books, including a retrospective look at Suzanne Voilquin and women in the Saint-Simonian movement, bringing the story full circle to another generation.

Their stories brilliantly illustrate the paradoxes of nineteenth century colonialism in Egypt. Suzanne Voilquin grew up in the Parisian working class and sympathized deeply with Egyptians but initially exoticized the differences between Egypt and her home country, while Urbain, a literary pioneer in black pride, nevertheless joined the French army and saw his role in the colonial occupation as a means of helping indigenous people. These characters transcend the neat binary of East and West and offer a rich, nuanced window onto the experiences of French travelers in Egypt during the nineteenth century.

PROSE AWARD WINNER, ART HISTORY & CRITICISM
The first-ever book-length history of Arab graphic design

Arab graphic design emerged in the early twentieth century out of a need to influence, and give expression to, the far-reaching economic, social, and political changes that were taking place in the Arab world at the time. But graphic design as a formally recognized genre of visual art only came into its own in the region in the twenty-first century and, to date, there has been no published study on the subject to speak of.

A History of Arab Graphic Design traces the people and events that were integral to the shaping of a field of graphic design in the Arab world. Examining the work of over eighty key designers from Morocco to Iraq, and covering the period from pre-1900 to the end of the twentieth century, Bahia Shehab and Haytham Nawar chart the development of design in the region, beginning with Islamic art and Arabic calligraphy, and their impact on Arab visual culture, through to the digital revolution and the arrival of the Internet. They look at how cinema, economic prosperity, and political and cultural events gave birth to and shaped the founders of Arab graphic design.

Highlighting the work of key designers and stunningly illustrated with over 600 color images, A History of Arab Graphic Design is an invaluable resource tool for graphic designers, one which, it is hoped, will place Arab visual culture and design on the map of a thriving international design discourse.

Egypt's sun queen magnificently revealed in a new book by renowned Egyptologist, Aidan Dodson

During the last half of the fourteenth century BC, Egypt was perhaps at the height of its prosperity. It was against this background that the Amarna Revolution occurred. Throughout, its instigator, King Akhenaten, had at his side his Great Wife, Nefertiti. When a painted bust of the queen found at Amarna in 1912 was first revealed to the public in the 1920s, it soon became one of the great artistic icons of the world. Nefertiti's name and face are perhaps the best known of any royal woman of ancient Egypt and one of the best recognized figures of antiquity, but her image has come in many ways to overshadow the woman herself.

Nefertiti's current world dominion as a cultural and artistic icon presents an interesting contrast with the way in which she was actively written out of history soon after her own death. This book explores what we can reconstruct of the life of the queen, tracing the way in which she and her image emerged in the wake of the first tentative decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs during the 1820s-1840s, and then took on the world over the next century and beyond.

All indications are that her final fate was a tragic one, but although every effort was made to wipe out Nefertiti's memory after her death, modern archaeology has rescued the queen-pharaoh from obscurity and set her on the road to today's international status.

A multigenerational literary memoir that sheds new light on one of the Arab world's most renowned Romantic poets, through the eyes of his granddaughter

Ibrahim Nagui (1898-1953) was one of the Arab world's most important Romantic poets writing in Arabic during the first half of the twentieth century. A founding member of the Apollo school, he also published widely in the fields of medicine, nutrition, psychology, sociology, and translation.

This multigenerational, genre-crossing work of literary nonfiction sheds new light on Nagui through the eyes of his granddaughter, literary scholar Samia Mehrez. Nagui is best known for his poem al-Atlal (the Ruins), which was later sung by legendary Egyptian diva Umm Kulthum. Drawing on a series of family archives, including Nagui's own published and unpublished writings, Mehrez embarks on a journey through multiple languages, generations, and geographies, as she comes to reconcile with the shadow of her grandfather, who died two years before she was born. Mehrez unpacks many of the myths surrounding Nagui and in doing so, reflects on how he impacted her own career as a literary critic.

A richly nuanced analysis of how ancient Egyptian society regarded and dealt with pregnancy, mothers, birth, and children

In ancient Egypt, a woman's primary role was that of mother, and as such she ensured her place within both her household and her community. And so, gods, doctor-magicians, as well as ghosts were all called upon to help the woman become pregnant.

Pregnancy was not without risks, and the many tests, prescriptions, and spells that have survived to this day help us to understand obstetrics as it was practiced in those distant times. Once the woman had eluded the ill will of Seth-who was held responsible for miscarriages-and had reached her term, she was faced with the much awaited and yet also feared moment of birth. The successful delivery of a child into the world was seen as a gift of the gods, but it did not mean that the parent's worries were over. Indeed, it has been estimated that a third of all children did not reach the age of five years despite the combined efforts of parents and doctor-magicians to protect them.

Amandine Marshall draws upon a wealth of sources, including texts, images, iconography, artefacts, and children's bodies themselves, as well as medicine, anthropology, and ethnography, to examine these issues and more, and in doing so sheds unprecedented light on the experience of maternity and early childhood in ancient Egypt.

The first illustrated study of ethnic silver jewelry in Yemen, by an expert researcher and collector, new in paperback

Silver Treasures from the Land of Sheba documents a disappearing artistic and cultural tradition with over three hundred photographs showing individual pieces, rare images of women wearing their jewelry with traditional dress, and the various regions in Yemen where the author did her field research. Ransom's descriptions of the people she met and befriended, and her exploration of the significance of a woman's handmade jewelry with its attributes of power, protection, beauty, and personal identity, will appeal to ethnic jewelry fans, ethnographers, jewelry designers, and art historians.

Amulet cases, hair ornaments, bridal headdresses, earrings, necklaces, ankle and wrist bracelets are all beautifully photographed in intricate detail, interspersed with the author's own photographs of the women who shared their stories and their hospitality with her. A chapter on the history of silversmithing in Yemen tells the surprising story of the famed Jewish Yemeni silversmiths, many of whom left Yemen in the late 1940s. This is the first in-depth study of Yemeni silver, uniquely illustrated with photographs of a world that is transforming before our eyes, and animated with the portraits of a precious legacy.

Illustrated publications and the role of market forces in shaping representations of Egypt at a time when European colonial interests in the region were at their peak, with 80 color and black and white illustrations

In the nineteenth century, following Napoleon Bonaparte's 1798 campaign in Egypt, new possibilities of travel and improvements in printing technology saw an emergence of publishing ventures in France and Britain dedicated to the production of albums and travel accounts featuring images of Muslim Egypt and Islamic architecture and catering to a growing European fascination with the East.

Visualizing Egypt analyzes the context and process of production of these highly illustrated publications, from their conceptualization to the finished product and its afterlife, from marketing to the sales of these books, and from circulation to their reception by nineteenth-century audiences. By tracing the long, arduous, and often risky publishing journeys of the makers of these books, including publishers, writers, and artists, such as the Frenchman Émile Prisse d'Avennes, Paulina Banas reveals a complex terrain of changing market demands, collaborations, and conflicting views, and the unsettled authorship of these works, prompting us to think more profoundly about artistic and intellectual exchange in the world of nineteenth-century Orientalist book production.

Visualizing Egypt considers nineteenth-century book illustrations on Egypt and the Orient not merely as expressions of enduring ideology and colonial propaganda, but as representations shaped by the often-overlooked commercial exigencies of the growing publishing industry and the reckless competition within it.

An innovative account of the careers of the Nubians who occupied the Egyptian throne, written by a leading Egyptologist and author of Tutankhamun, King of Egypt

The region of Nubia--now spanning the modern border between Egypt and Sudan--was long a subject of Egyptian imperial domination by its ancient pharaohs. However, in the eighth century BC matters were suddenly reversed, when the kings of Kush, the ancient name for Nubia, became the overlords of Egypt for nearly a century, before being forced to withdraw in the face of Assyrian invasions. Yet the Kushite kingdom would endure back in its heartlands for another millennium, the heritage of its Egyptian sojourn still visible in its fields of pyramid-tombs.

This authoritative yet accessible book tells the story of these Nubian pharaohs of Egypt, from the origins of their kingdom of Kush, through their time as rulers of Egypt, to their heritage in the heart of Sudan--and their rediscovery in modern times. The latter uncovers some very unsavory examples of the racist attitudes of some earlier scholars. These engendered enduringly negative attitudes to aspects of careers of the Nubian pharaohs that find little support in the actual surviving evidence. The latter includes a fascinating network of texts from not only Egypt and Sudan, but also Assyria and the Bible, reflecting the interactions and conflicts of the period. There are also the standing monuments of Nubian pharaohs, ranging from temples they built throughout their dominions, to their tombs: pyramids, constructed in their ancestral heartland, in which Nubian and Egyptian funerary customs were intriguingly entangled.

Richly illustrated in full color throughout, this fascinating book by a leading Egyptologist will be essential reading for anyone interested in the lives and times of Egypt's Nubian pharaohs.

Amarna Sunset tells the story of the decline and fall of the pharaoh Akhenaten's religious revolution in the fourteenth century bc. Beginning at the regime's high point in his Year 12, it traces the subsequent collapse that saw the deaths of many of the king's loved ones, his attempts to guarantee the revolution through co-rulers, and the last frenzied assault on the god Amun.

The book then outlines the events of the subsequent five decades that saw the extinction of the royal line, an attempt to place a foreigner on Egypt's throne, and the accession of three army officers in turn. Among its conclusions are that the mother of Tutankhamun was none other than Nefertiti, and that the queen was joint-pharaoh in turn with both her husband Akhenaten and her son. As such, she was herself instrumental in beginning the return to orthodoxy, undoing her erstwhile husband's life-work before her own mysterious disappearance.

This fully updated and extensively revised paperback edition addresses new evidence and discussions that have appeared in the decade since the book was originally published. Amarna Sunset, together with its recently updated companion volume, Amarna Sunrise, accordingly provides readers with a comprehensive, up-to-date overview of Egyptian history during the golden years of the Late Bronze Age in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Near East.

The royal mummies in the Cairo Museum are an important source of information about the lives of the ancient Egyptians. The remains of these pharaohs and queens can inform us about their age at death and medical conditions from which they may have suffered, as well as the mummification process and objects placed within the wrappings.

Using the latest technology, including Multi-Detector Computed Tomography and DNA analysis, co-authors Zahi Hawass and Sahar Saleem present the results of the examination of royal mummies of the Eighteenth to Twentieth Dynasties. New imaging techniques not only reveal a wealth of information about each mummy, but render amazingly lifelike and detailed images of the remains. In addition, utilizing 3D images, the anatomy of each face has been discerned for a more accurate interpretation of a mummy's facial features. This latest research has uncovered some surprising results about the genealogy of, and familial relationships between, these ancient individuals, as well as some unexpected medical finds.

Historical information is provided to place the royal mummies in context, and the book with its many illustrations will appeal to Egyptologists, paleopathologists, and non-specialists alike, as the authors seek to uncover the secrets of these most fascinating members of the New Kingdom royal families.