Ian Shaw, (born 1961) is a British academic and Egyptologist, who earned his PhD from the University of Cambridge and became a Reader in Egyptian Archaeology at the University of Liverpool. He directs several archaeological projects in Egypt.
His field work originally focused on el-Amarna, but since then, he has extensively surveyed, excavated, and studied mining and quarrying sites from various Ancient Egyptian periods, those include Wadi el-Hudi, [1] Gebel el-Asr, Hatnub, Wadi Hammamat, among others.
He is a social historian and archaeologist. His work focuses on methods and mechanics of Egyptian craftsmen and laborers. Additionally, he has studied ancient Egyptian warfare, mining, industry, technology, and much more.
Besides writing several books, he has also edited major volumes related to Ancient Egypt, including Ancient Egyptian Materials and Industries, the Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, [2] several Dictionaries of Ancient Egypt, and the Oxford Handbook of Egyptology.
On 15 March 2018, Shaw was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (FSA). [3]
Ancient Egypt was a civilization of ancient Northeast Africa. It was concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River, situated in the place that is now the country Egypt. Ancient Egyptian civilization followed prehistoric Egypt and coalesced around 3100 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under Menes. The history of ancient Egypt unfolded as a series of stable kingdoms interspersed by periods of relative instability known as "Intermediate Periods". The various kingdoms fall into one of three categories: the Old Kingdom of the Early Bronze Age, the Middle Kingdom of the Middle Bronze Age, or the New Kingdom of the Late Bronze Age.
Amenemhat III, also known as Amenemhet III, was a pharaoh of ancient Egypt and the sixth king of the Twelfth Dynasty of the Middle Kingdom. He was elevated to throne as co-regent by his father Senusret III, with whom he shared the throne as the active king for twenty years. During his reign, Egypt attained its cultural and economic zenith of the Middle Kingdom.
The Middle Kingdom of Egypt is the period in the history of ancient Egypt following a period of political division known as the First Intermediate Period. The Middle Kingdom lasted from approximately 2040 to 1782 BC, stretching from the reunification of Egypt under the reign of Mentuhotep II in the Eleventh Dynasty to the end of the Twelfth Dynasty. The kings of the Eleventh Dynasty ruled from Thebes and the kings of the Twelfth Dynasty ruled from el-Lisht.
Usermaatre Heqamaatre Setepenamun Ramesses IV was the third pharaoh of the Twentieth Dynasty of the New Kingdom of Ancient Egypt. He was the second son of Ramesses III and became crown prince when his elder brother Amenherkhepshef died aged 15 in 1164 BC, when Ramesses was only 12 years old. His promotion to crown prince:
is suggested by his appearance in a scene of the festival of Min at the Ramesses III temple at Karnak, which may have been completed by Year 22 [of his father's reign].
Merenre Nemtyemsaf was an Ancient Egyptian pharaoh, fourth king of the Sixth Dynasty. He ruled Egypt for six to 11 years in the early 23rd century BC, toward the end of the Old Kingdom period. He was the son of his predecessor Pepi I Meryre and queen Ankhesenpepi I and was in turn succeeded by Pepi II Neferkare who might have been his son or less probably his brother. Pepi I may have shared power with Merenre in a co-regency at the very end of the former's reign.
The Fifth Dynasty of ancient Egypt is often combined with Dynasties III, IV and VI under the group title the Old Kingdom. The Fifth Dynasty pharaohs reigned for approximately 150 years, from the early 25th century BC until the mid 24th century BC.
The Eighth Dynasty of ancient Egypt is a poorly known and short-lived line of pharaohs reigning in rapid succession in the early 22nd century BC, likely with their seat of power in Memphis. The Eighth Dynasty held sway at a time referred to as the very end of the Old Kingdom or the beginning of the First Intermediate Period. The power of the pharaohs was waning while that of the provincial governors, known as nomarchs, was increasingly important, the Egyptian state having by then effectively turned into a feudal system. In spite of close relations between the Memphite kings and powerful nomarchs, notably in Coptos, the Eighth Dynasty was eventually overthrown by the nomarchs of Heracleopolis Magna, who founded the Ninth Dynasty. The Eighth Dynasty is sometimes combined with the preceding Seventh Dynasty, owing to the lack of archeological evidence for the latter which may be fictitious.
Amenemhat IV was the seventh and penultimate king of the late Twelfth Dynasty of Egypt during the late Middle Kingdom period. He arguably ruled around 1786–1777 BC for about nine regnal years.
The Ninth Dynasty of ancient Egypt is often combined with the 7th, 8th, 10th and early 11th Dynasties under the group title First Intermediate Period. The dynasty that seems to have supplanted the Eighth Dynasty is extremely obscure. The takeover by the rulers of Herakleopolis was violent and is reflected in Manetho's description of Achthoes, the founder of the dynasty, as 'more terrible than his predecessors', who 'wrought evil things for those in all Egypt".
Nebtawyre Mentuhotep IV was the last king of the 11th Dynasty in the Middle Kingdom. He seems to fit into a 7-year period in the Turin Canon for which there is no recorded king.
The Turin Papyrus Map is an ancient Egyptian map, generally considered the oldest surviving map of topographical interest from the ancient world. It is drawn on a papyrus reportedly discovered at Deir el-Medina in Thebes, collected by Bernardino Drovetti in Egypt sometime before 1824 CE and now preserved in Turin's Museo Egizio. The map was drawn around 1150 BCE by the well-known Scribe-of-the-Tomb Amennakhte, son of Ipuy. It was prepared for Ramesses IV's quarrying expedition to the Wadi Hammamat in the Eastern Desert, which exposes Precambrian rocks of the Arabian-Nubian Shield. The purpose of the expedition was to obtain blocks of bekhen-stone to be used for statues of the king.
Khaneferre Sobekhotep IV was one of the more powerful Egyptian kings of the 13th Dynasty, who reigned at least eight years. His brothers, Neferhotep I and Sihathor, were his predecessors on the throne, the latter having only ruled as coregent for a few months.
Vladimir Semyonovich Golenishchev, formerly also known as Wladimir or Woldemar Golenischeff, was one of the first and one of the most accomplished Russian Egyptologists. He was one of the founders of the Cairo School of Egyptology and one of the most recognized authorities of the schools of Assyriology and Egyptology in Russia.
The Fraser Tombs are a necropolis located 10 km (6.2 mi) northeast of Al Minya, Upper Egypt. They sit around 2 km (1.2 mi) south of Tihna el-Gebel village, which was an ancient limestone quarry.
Raymond Oliver Faulkner, FSA, was an English Egyptologist and philologist of the ancient Egyptian language.
The stone quarries of ancient Egypt once produced quality stone for the building of tombs and temples and for decorative monuments such as sarcophagi, stelae, and statues. These quarries are now recognised archaeological sites. Ancient quarry sites in the Nile valley accounted for much of the limestone and sandstone used as building stone for temples, monuments, and pyramids. Eighty percent of the ancient sites are located in the Nile valley; some of them have disappeared under the waters of Lake Nasser and some others were lost due to modern mining activity.
Wadi Hammamat is a dry river bed in Egypt's Eastern Desert, about halfway between Al-Qusayr and Qena. It was a major mining region and trade route east from the Nile Valley in ancient times, and three thousand years of rock carvings and graffiti make it a major scientific and tourist site today.
Hatnub was the location of Egyptian alabaster quarries and an associated seasonally occupied workers' settlement in the Eastern Desert, about 65 km (40 mi) from el-Minya, southeast of el-Amarna. The pottery, hieroglyph inscriptions and hieratic graffiti at the site show that it was in use intermittently from at least as early as the reign of Khufu until the Roman period. The Hatnub quarry settlement, associated with three principal quarries, like those associated with gold mines in the Wadi Hammamat and elsewhere, are characterized by drystone windbreaks, roads, causeways, cairns and stone alignments.
Ancient Egyptian trade developed with the gradual creation of land and sea trade routes connecting the ancient Egyptian civilization with ancient India, the Fertile Crescent, Arabia and Sub-Saharan Africa.
The Wadi el-Hudi is a wadi in Southern Egypt, in the Eastern Desert. Here were ancient quarries for amethyst. The Wadi el-Hudi is important in archaeology for its high number of rock inscriptions and stelae, mainly dating to the Middle Kingdom, as amethyst was especially popular in this period. The Wadi el-Hudi ends in the Nile valley a few kilometers north of Aswan and is coming there from the South-East. The ancient amethyst quarries are about 20 kilometres south-east from Aswan.