New Release Books by Kim Ryholt

The Tebtunis temple library is the only ancient Egyptian temple library of which substantial remains are preserved by far the richest, single source of Egyptian literary texts. This volume contains a selection of demotic texts: a theological treatise, manuals on dream interpretation, a manual on birth prognosis, three lists of professions and plants, a list recording the titles of twenty cultic treatises, new fragments of the Great Demotic Book of Wisdom text and an astronomical text. It further includes an illustration from a manual on the pantheistic Bes and three fragments of demotic narrative of unknown origin. None of the papyri have previously been edited. "

The Carlsberg Papyri, vol. 13, presents an exhaustive catalogue of Egyptian funerary manuscripts in Danish collections. The volume includes sixteen papyrus manuscripts, two of which are preserved intact, and smaller pieces of inscribed linen from six mummies. The material spans a period of more than a millennium, ranging from c. 1200 BC to AD 100. Most of the manuscripts are guides to the afterlife; eighteen of them contain texts and vignettes from the Book of the Dead, while a minor fragment preserves an illustration from the Book of Amduat. The three remaining manuscripts has previously been published.

This book presents ten narrative texts written in the demotic script and preserved in papyri from the Tebtunis temple library (1st/2nd century AD). Eight of the texts are historical narratives which focus on the first millennium BC. Four concern prince Inaros, who rebelled against the Assyrian domination of Egypt in the 7th century, and his clan. One is about Inaros himself, while the other three take place after his death. Two other narratives mention Necho I and II of the Saite Period. The story about Necho II is particularly noteworthy, since it refers to the king as Nechepsos and, for the first time, provides us with the identity behind this name. Nechepsos is well supported as a sage king in Greek literary tradition, above all, in relation to astrology. Of the two final historical narratives, one belongs to the cycle of stories about the Heliopolitan priesthood and the other concerns the Persian occupation of Egypt in the 5th or 4th century. The volume further includes a prophecy

"The vast collections of Egyptian objects on display in Western museums attract millions of visitors every year, and they reinforce a cultural fascination for this ancient civilisation that has been a feature of European intellectual history since Roman times. This book tells the story of how these objects came to be here. ... The book presents the first in-depth analysis of this market during its ''golden age'' in Egypt in the late 19th and early 20th Century. It is primarily based on the archival material of the Danish Egyptologist H. O. Lange (1863-1943) who, during two prolonged stays in Egypt (1899/1900 and 1929/1930), bought objects on behalf of Danish museums. The travel diaries, and the accompanying photographs, are complemented by a wide range of other sources, including contemporary travel guides and various travel memoirs, which together paint an extraordinarily detailed picture of the extensive antiquities trade.