Böcker av Miroslav Verner

An authoritative account by preeminent Egyptologist Miroslav Verner covering over 70 of Egypt's and Sudan's pyramids, their historical and political significance, updated in a magnificent new editionA pyramid, as the posthumous residence of a king and the place of his eternal cult, was just a single, if dominant, part of a larger complex of structures with specific religious, economic, and administrative functions. The first royal pyramid in Egypt was built at the beginning of the Third Dynasty (ca. 2592-2544 BC) by Horus Netjerykhet, later called Djoser, while the last pyramid was the work of Ahmose I, the first king of the Eighteenth Dynasty (ca. 1539-1292 BC).Nearly two decades have passed since distinguished Egyptologist Miroslav Verner's seminal The Pyramids was first published. In that time, fresh explorations and new sophisticated technologies have contributed to ever more detailed and compelling discussions around Egypt's enigmatic and most celebrated of ancient monuments. In this newly revised and updated edition, including color photographs for the first time, Verner brings his rich erudition and long years of site experience comes to bear on all the latest discoveries and archaeological and historical aspects of over 70 of Egypt's and Sudan's pyramids in the broader context of their more than one-thousand-year-long development. Lucidly written, with 300 illustrations, and filled with gripping insights, this comprehensive study illuminates an era that is both millennia away and vividly immediate.

At the center of the world-famous pyramid field of the Memphite necropolis lies a group of pyramids, temples, and tombs named after the nearby village of Abusir. Long overshadowed by the more familiar pyramids at Giza and Saqqara, this area has nonetheless been the site, for the last fifty years, of an extensive operation to discover its past. This is Abusir, realm of Osiris, God of the dead, and its story is one of both modern archaeology and the long-buried mysteries that it seeks to uncover.

Despite the prominence of ancient temples in the landscape of Egypt, books about them are surprisingly rare; this new publication from a prominent Czech scholar answers the need for a study that goes beyond temple architecture to examine the spiritual, economic and political aspects of these specific institutions and the dominant roles they played.