Subject Area: Egypt

A History of the Goddess Isis (hard cover)

Lombardi, Chiara
2021 1-4955-0890-0 560 pages
Hardcover book/30 color images. From the author: "The analysis of the figure of Isis appears to be distinguished by studies that have only rarely been devoted to an overall view of the role of the goddess. ...The purpose of [this] study is precisely to give an organic contribution to the different material on Isis so far published. But [the] goal is also to understand who Isis is originally and how Isis has been transformed over time. ...[T]his is not a mutation of her original being, but an extension of her prerogatives, due both to the typicality of the Egyptian religion, and to her character that binds her deeply to human feeling."

The Praxis of Inequality: A Study of Three Ancient Agricultural Societies (Egypt, China, and Mesopotamia)

Inbody, Joel
2022 1-4955-0974-5 256 pages
From the Introduction (pg. 9):
"In this book I have made an effort to reconstruct what inequality looked like in three ancient agricultural societies: the kingdoms of Mesopotamia, China, and Egypt. The inequality I consider in these societies was not defined in terms of gold, silver, or property, but in terms of a person's diet and command of excess food and drink. In simple terms, I will argue that elites in these agricultural societies enjoyed an upper-class lifestyle because they served food and drink offerings to gods. Those offerings were produced primarily by non-elites, who believed gods dined on them But the truth is that elites divided food and drink offerings among themselves. Religion disguised the fact that feasting rituals for gods amounted to a redistribution of resources."