BiblioVault - Books about Egyptians

Biblical Peoples and Ethnicity

An Archaeological Study of Egyptians, Canaanite

Ann E. Killebrew

SBL Press, 2005

Ancient Israel did not emerge within a vacuum but rather came to exist alongside various peoples, including Canaanites, Egyptians, and Philistines. Indeed, Israel’s very proximity to these groups has made it difficult—until now—to distinguish the archaeological traces of early Israel and other contemporary groups. Through an analysis of the results from recent excavations in light of relevant historical and later biblical texts, this book proposes that it is possible to identify these peoples and trace culturally or ethnically defined boundaries in the archaeological record. Features of late second-millennium B.C.E. culture are critically examined in their historical and biblical contexts in order to define the complex social boundaries of the early Iron Age and reconstruct the diverse material world of these four peoples. Of particular value to scholars, archaeologists, and historians, this volume will also be a standard reference and resource for students and other readers interested in the emergence of early Israel.

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The Egyptian Labor Corps

Race, Space, and Place in the First World War

Kyle J. Anderson

University of Texas Press, 2021

During World War I, the British Empire enlisted half a million young men, predominantly from the countryside of Egypt, in the Egyptian Labor Corps (ELC) and put them to work handling military logistics in Europe and the Middle East. British authorities reneged on their promise not to draw Egyptians into the war, and, as Kyle Anderson shows, the ELC was seen by many in Egypt as a form of slavery. The Egyptian Labor Corps tells the forgotten story of these young men, culminating in the essential part they came to play in the 1919 Egyptian Revolution.

Combining sources from archives in four countries, Anderson explores Britain’s role in Egypt during this period and how the ELC came to be, as well as the experiences and hardships these men endured. As he examines the ways they coped—through music, theater, drugs, religion, strikes, and mutiny—he illustrates how Egyptian nationalists, seeing their countrymen in a state akin to slavery, began to grasp that they had been racialized as “people of color.” Documenting the history of the ELC and its work during the First World War, The Egyptian Labor Corps also provides a fascinating reinterpretation of the 1919 revolution through the lens of critical race theory.

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The Egyptians

Edited by Sergio Donadoni

University of Chicago Press, 1997

The Egyptians is a vibrant, accessible introduction to the people who lived along the Nile for almost thirty-five centuries. In this collection of essays, eleven internationally renowned Egyptologists present studies of ancient Egyptians arranged by social type—slaves, craftsmen, priests, bureaucrats, the pharaoh, peasants, and women, among others. These individual essays are filled with a wealth of historical detail that both informs and fascinates: we learn, for example, that Egyptian peasants could not afford burial (their corpses were abandoned on the desert fringe), and that it was the bureaucrats who made the Egyptian system tick (the pyramids could not have been built without them).

Read consecutively, the portraits merge to create a larger picture of Egyptian culture, state, and society. The framework of the Egyptian state, in particular, is touched upon in each essay, describing the meticulous administration and well-organized hierarchical system that fostered centuries of stability and prosperity.

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The Measure of Distance

An Immigrant Novel

Pauline Kaldas

University of Arkansas Press, 2023

They went to Cairo, leaving behind the adobe houses built along the edge of the Nile and the villagers who all knew each other and who had lived on this land for more centuries than their names could count. Behind them, they left the imprint of their footsteps for others who might follow.

This family saga begins when Salim, the eldest of three brothers, moves to Cairo at the start of the twentieth century with dreams of opening his own bakery. His decision to leave his ancestral village of Kom Ombo despite his parents’ objections reverberates across generations, kicking off a series of migrations that shape the lives of his family and their descendants throughout the decades that follow. These migrations only intensify after the revolution of 1952—with Misha, Salim’s eldest grandchild, being the first to flee to “Amreeka,” his annual phone calls home becoming briefer and briefer with each passing year.

Culminating with the 2011 protests in Tahrir Square, Pauline Kaldas’s The Measure of Distance is a detailed portrait of immigration against the backdrop of an Egypt in constant flux and an America that is always falling short of the fantasy. Alternating between tales of those who migrate and those who stay, this expansive novel follows its characters as they determine the course of their lives, often choosing one uncertainty over another as they migrate to new lands or plant their roots more firmly in their homeland.

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Nurturing Masculinities

Men, Food, and Family in Contemporary Egypt

By Nefissa Naguib

University of Texas Press, 2015

Two structuring concepts have predominated in discussions concerning how Middle Eastern men enact their identity culturally: domination and patriarchy. Nurturing Masculinities dispels the illusion that Arab men can be adequately represented when we speak of them only in these terms. By bringing male perspectives into food studies, which typically focus on the roles of women in the production and distribution of food, Nefissa Naguib demonstrates how men interact with food, in both political and domestic spheres, and how these interactions reflect important notions of masculinity in modern Egypt.

In this classic ethnography, narratives about men from a broad range of educational backgrounds, age groups, and social classes capture a holistic representation of masculine identity and food in modern Egypt on familial, local, and national levels. These narratives encompass a broad range of issues and experiences, including explorations of traditions surrounding food culture; displays of caregiving and love when men recollect the taste, feel, and fragrance of food as they discuss their desires to feed their families well and often; and the role that men, working to ensure the equitable distribution of food, played during the Islamist movement of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2011. At the core of Nurturing Masculinities is the idea that food is a powerful marker of manhood, fatherhood, and family structure in contemporary Egypt, and by better understanding these foodways, we can better understand contemporary Egyptian society as a whole.

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The Time between Places

Stories That Weave In and Out of Egypt and America

Pauline Kaldas

University of Arkansas Press, 2010

This collection of twenty stories delves into the lives of Egyptian characters, from those living in Egypt to those who have immigrated to the United States. With subtle and eloquent prose, the complexities of these characters are revealed, opening a door into their intimate struggles with identity and place. We meet people who are tempted by the possibilities of America and others who are tempted by the desire to return home. Some are in the throes of re-creating themselves in the new world while others seem to be embedded in the loss of their homeland. Many of these characters, although physically located in either the United States or Egypt, have lives that embrace both cultures. "A Game of Chance" follows the actions of a young man when he wins the immigration lottery and then must decide whether or not to change his life. "Cumin and Coriander" takes us inside a woman's thoughts as she tries to come to terms with the path her life has taken while working as a cook for American expatriates in Egypt. "The Top" enters the mind of a man whose immigration results in a loss of identity and sanity. These compelling stories pull us into the lives of many different characters and offer us striking insights into the Arab American experience.

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