ANCIENT EGYPT AND NUBIA

Offers a comprehensive visual selection of primary objects, reflecting the range of media and artistic styles employed in over 5,000 years of Egyptian craftsmanship.The collections of objects from Ancient Egypt and Nubia to be found in the Ashmolean Museum are second only, in Britain, to those of the British Museum.Especially renowned are the artefacts associated with the first rulers of Egypt and the prehistoric cultures that preceded them, the distinctive sculpture and painting of the Amarna Period, and the monuments of the Nubian pharaohs of the 25th Dynasty.From the earliest sculptures of human beings in Egypt to the sophisticated metalwork of late antiquity, this book showcases the richness and diversity of the Museum's Egyptian and Nubian collections in beautiful full-colour images with informative captions. The introduction traces the formation of the collections over a period of three hundred years, setting them within the context of Egyptology as a gradually emerging discipline and highlighting some of the scholars, excavators, and collectors particularly associated with Oxford and the Ashmolean.The civilisations of ancient Egypt and its neighbour, Nubia, are amongst the most fascinating of antiquity, and the Ashmolean's collections exemplify all facets of their distinctive and evolving cultures from prehistory to the Byzantine Period, from the possessions of kings to the stuff of everyday life.Contents:Introduction: Egypt in Oxford; Maps of Egypt and Nubia; The Predynastic and Early Dynastic Periods; Dynastic Egypt, from the 4th to the 25th Dynasty; From the Late Period to the Arab Conquest; Ancient Nubia.Helen Whitehouse is Senior Assistant keeper in the Department of Antiquities and Curator of the Egyptian collections in the Ashmolean Museum. Her research interests include the Early Dynastic Period, painting and drawing in Roman Egypt, and the post-classical interpretation of ancient Egypt.