Fifteen 'slab stelae' and stela fragments were found set into the exterior walls of the Giza mastaba tombs from the reign of Khufu and his successors. Taken as a group, they provide one of the most important sources of Egyptian artistic and historical documents of the early Old Kingdom. This publication presents a fresh interpretation of the Giza stelae, with new colour photography, 'digital epigraphy' facsimile drawings, new translations, original discovery photographs and recent colour images taken at Giza. The book is published in full colour, with numerous charts and catalogues, gathering information on all Giza tombs with slab stelae emplacements, the history of their excavation, previous scholarly research, and comparative and interpretive chapters. Appendices include both colour and line drawing palaeographies of all hieroglyphs appearing on the stelae, and a collection of the enigmatic 'linen lists' that adorn the Giza stelae and many other Archaic and Old Kingdom monuments. Indexes complete the volume.


About the Author

Peter Der Manuelian is Philip J. King Professor of Egyptology and Director of the Harvard Semitic Museum.

Reviews

'Represents a departure from usual scholarly publication, in that there are full-color images (both photographs and digital graphics) throughout... represents the new state of the art for such publishing...Peter Der Manuelian is not only one of the shining lights of his generation of American Egyptologists, but is also a talented archaeology-publications designer and a pioneer in the fledgling field of digital epigraphy...Because the writing in Slab Stelae rises far above the usually leaden scholarly prose, it is possible for the lay person to read (or read in) the volume without fear of nodding off in the process.' - (KMT, 2005)

'This is a remarkable piece of work, well researched, documented and written and the author has exhausted the published sources in addition to many manuscripts of early field notes not readily available to scholars. This volume is also thoroughly edited[...] The photographs, the line-drawings, and the printing are superb, and the author fully used the digital epigraphy in producing appendixes 1 and 2. This book is much more than a catalogue of the Giza slab stelae, it is a thought provoking research on the subject, which will encourage scholars to look at the stelae, and perhaps others from different sites, in a different light. We are grateful to Dr. Der Manuelian for enriching the Old Kingdom Library.' (Naguib Kanawati, Bibliotheca Orientalis 2006)

Book Information
ISBN 9780974002514
Author Peter Der Manuelian
Format Hardback
Page Count 278
Imprint Yale Egyptological Institute
Publisher Yale Egyptological Institute
Weight(grams) 2233g