Weekly Websites

Cairo Daily Photo
http://cairogizadailyphoto.blogspot.com
A blog which offers one photo a day from the area around Cairo/Giza, Egypt .

Dissertation: Religious encounters on the Southern Egyptian frontier in late antiquity (AD 298 – 642)
http://dissertations.ub.rug.nl/FILES/faculties/theology/2005/j.h.f.dijkstra/titlecon.pdf
By Jitse Harm Fokke Dijkstra (1976). A 32 page dissertation in PDF format looking at the nature of religion on the borders between Egypt and Nubia in the Roman/Byzantine period. Here's a short extract:
"Due to the special circumstances conditioned by the position on the southern frontier, the Ancient Egyptian cults remained alive at Philae until the sixth century when Justinian forced the temples to close and the island finally became Christian. Recently, several studies have paid attention to this exceptional situation, concentrating on different aspects of the cult site in Late Antiquity: its pilgrimage tradition, the persistence of its Ancient Egyptian scripts (hieroglyphic and demotic) and the effect of the closure of its temples upon the conversion of Nubia to Christianity. Thus, Philae has often been considered as ‘a different story’.
Yet, this image of an abrupt replacement of Ancient Egyptian religion by Christianity in the sixth century poses a problem. As early as the fourth century, there had been an episcopal see on the small island and undoubtedly a Christian community had already established itself there by then. In the context of a world gradually becoming Christian, could the Ancient Egyptian cults have continued, seemingly undisturbed, for more than two centuries?"

E-Book: Prehistoric Egypt by Flinders Petrie
http://library.case.edu/ksl/ecoll/books/petpre00/petpre00.html
There are dozens of other books in digital format that can be accessed via the Etana website, but this is the one that I happened to be using last week: Prehistoric Egypt was written by Petrie in 1920, and includes illustrations and photographs of over 1000 items in the UCL collections. Anyone interested in visiting the Petrie collection in London, U.K. should have a look at the Petrie website at: http://www.petrie.ucl.ac.uk/

Rock art and cultural responses to climatic changes in the Central Sahara during the Holocene.
http://jean-loic.lequellec.club.fr/page76/assets/EMAM.pdf
By Jean-Loic Lequellec. In: Peddarapu Chenna Reddy [ed.], Exploring the Mind of Ancient Man (Festschrift to Robert Bednarik), New Delhi: Research India Press, p. 173-188.
As it says on the box. This paper, with photographs, looks at human response to climate change in the Sahara and attempts to chart human movements across the Saharan landscape. Other papers by the same author can be found at:
http://jean-loic.lequellec.club.fr/page76/page76.html

Turin Papyrus Map from Ancient Egypt by James A. Harrell
http://www.eeescience.utoledo.edu/Faculty/Harrell/Egypt/Turin%20Papyrus/Harrell_Papyrus_Map_text.htm
Truly fascinating look at one of the world's oldest topographical maps: "The Turin papyrus map is notable for being the only topographic map to survive from ancient Egypt and also for being one of the earliest maps in the world with real geographic content. Although there are a few older topographic maps from outside Egypt, they are all quite crude and rather abstract in comparison to the relatively modern-looking map drawn on the Turin papyrus. This map shows a 15 km stretch of Wadi Hammamat (‘Valley of Many Baths’) in the central part of Egypt’s Eastern Desert"
As well as providing a complete overview of the map, there are some excellent photographs and informative tables.

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