The American Research Center in Eygpt
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Over the last thirty years, ARCE has published more than forty catalogues, conference proceedings, bibliographies, anthologies, excavation reports, and critical editions. The publications attest to the range of scholarship undertaken by scholars and institutions in Egypt under ARCE's auspices, and to the wealth of the nation's artistic, architectural, scientific, literary, and religious culture.

A Focus on Conservation

PECH front_cover_only_smallDuring the past fifteen years, ARCE has undertaken an extraordinary new mission to preserve the cultural heritage of Egypt. With generous grants from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), more that fifty conservation projects have been completed, spanning many time periods and geographic regions within Egypt. Documentation and publication of these valuable projects are an ongoing priority.

In 2002 Yale University Press produced the first of these publications. Monastic Visions: Wall Paintings in the Monastery of St. Antony at the Red Sea by Elizabeth Bolman, documents and studies the extraordinary Coptic art revealed during conservation activity at the monastery. A follow-on volume, The Cave Church of Paul the Hermit at the Monastery of St. Paul in Egypt by William Lyster continues the scholarly exploration of the early Christian monastic community and the artwork it produced. This latest book was released in 2008 by Yale University Press.

The American University in Cairo Press' ARCE Conservation Series presents other dramatic ARCE conservation activities. The series began with The Monuments of Historic Cairo by Nicholas Warner published in 2005. Volume 2, Quseir: An Ottoman and Napoleonic Fortress on the Red Sea Coast of Egypt by Charles Le Quesne, and Volume 3, Villa of the Birds: the Excavation and Preservation of the Kom al-Dikka Mosaics by Wojciech Kolataj, Grzegorz Majcherek, and Ewa Parandowska are available from AUC Press. Volume 4, Babylon of Egypt: The Archaeology of Old Cairo and the Origins of the City, by Peter Sheehan, was released in October 2010.

For those readers interested in a comprehensive overview of the many ARCE conservation projects within one volume, ARCE has published Preserving Egypt's Cultural Heritage, edited by Randi Danforth. This large and sumptuously illustrated publication is available now. Purchase the book>>


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The Luxor Museum of Ancient Egyptian Art: Catalogue

James F. Romano, et al.
1979. The American Research Center in Egypt
xv + 219 pages, including 169 figures and 20 plates
ARCE catalog series 1
Cloth: ISBN 091 369 630 7
Distributed by Eisenbrauns
The Luxor Museum catalogue describes and illustrates more than a hundred sculptures, reliefs, paintings, and objects of minor art from the Theban area, ranging in date from the Predynastic to the Islamic period, including an unparalleled assemblage of relief work from the early reign of King Amenhotep IV, later called Akhenaten, and his queen, Nefertiti. This catalogue, published also in French (IFAO's Bibliothèque d'étude 95), German, and Arabic editions, remains the most exhaustive survey of the museum's astonishing riches.
  • James F. Romano (d. 11 August 2003) was curator in the Department of Egyptian, Classical, and Ancient Middle Eastern Art at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

Mendes I

R. K. Holz, David Stieglitz, Donald P. Hansen, and Edward Ochsenschlager
Edited by Emma Swan Hall and Bernard V. Bothmer
1980. The American Research Center in Egypt
xxi + 83 pages + 40 plates, indexes, 41 cm.
ARCE reports series 2
Cloth: ISBN 0 936 770 02 3 
Distributed by Eisenbrauns
Situated in the Nile Delta about 90 miles north of Cairo, Mendes, covering some 450 acres, was occupied from the early Old Kingdom through the Christian Era (ca. AD 800). During the Twenty-ninth Dynasty (fourth century BC), the city became Egypt's capital.

Mendes I brings together all known maps of the site and its environs: early examples based on the descriptions of Herodotus and Pliny the Geographer, maps of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century explorers, and maps produced expressly for this publication on the basis of the authors' excavations and surveys at the site, as well as aerial photographs.

Mendes: Preliminary Report on the 1979 and 1980 Seasons

Edited by Karen L. Wilson
1980. The American Research Center in Egypt
xiii + 43 pages + 35 b-w ills; includes bibliographical references; 29 cm
ARCE reports series 5 (Cities of the Delta, part 2)
Paper ISBN 089 003 080 4
Distributed by Eisenbrauns
The second in a series of ARCE publications on Nile Delta sites, this preliminary report treats findings from the excavation of a high ridge lying outside and to the southeast of Mendes' Twenty-sixth Dynasty sanctuary enclosure, which may have formed the ancient town's southeast harbor. Excavation revealed that the ridge itself was probably built up by purposeful dumping of debris of mixed Third Intermediate Period and Twenty-sixth Dynasty date during the second half of the sixth century BC. Individual chapters in the report treat the site's stratigraphy and architecture (Karen Wilson), Third-Intermediate Period through Late Hellenistic pottery finds (Susan Allen), Mycenaean and Attic ware (Marjorie Venit), amulets, amulet molds, and other small finds (Karen Wilson), and a Third Intermediate Period relief fragment of a deity (Victoria Solia).
  • Karen L. Wilson, director of the museum of the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, was field director of the 1979-80 Mendes excavations.

Tell el-Maskhuta: Preliminary Report on the Wadi Tumilat Project, 1978-1979

Edited by John S. Holladay Jr.
1982. The American Research Center in Egypt
x + 160 pages + 3 foldouts + 46 b-w plates. 29 cm
ARCE reports series 6 (Cities of the Delta, part 3)
Paper ISBN 089 003 084 7 
Distributed by Eisenbrauns
Tell el-Maskhuta was long supposed to be either the store city of Pithom mentioned in Exodus, or Succoth, one of the cities along the route of the Exodus. Beginning in 1978, a University of Toronto expedition surveyed the area with revolutionary results. Structures identified by a nineteenth-century excavator as "storehouses of the children of Israel," and dated by him to the thirteenth century BC, were found to date much later–the second and third centuries BC. The major settlement at the site dates from the late seventh century BC and seems to be connected with the first canal built through the area to carry the goods of India and southern Arabia to Mediterranean markets.

Evidence developed by the Toronto excavations suggests that the canal was once as important in world economics (and as great a cause of international conflict) as the Suez Canal. The excavations also shed new light on the origins of the Hyskos and revealed some of the earliest direct evidence of Christianity in Egypt.
  • John S. Holladay Jr, director of the University of Toronto excavations at Tell el-Maskhuta, is professor emeritus in the university's Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations.

Archaeological Investigations at el-Hibeh 1980: Preliminary Report

Robert J. Wenke
1984. The American Research Center in Egypt
xii + 142 pages + 12 plates, maps. 29 cm. Bibliography: pp. 128-41
ARCE reports series 9
Cloth ISBN 089 003 155 x
Paper ISBN 089 003 154 1 
Distributed by Eisenbrauns
Located at the juncture of Upper and Lower Egypt, the site of el-Hibeh was the repeated meeting point of political unity and fragmentation from the Third Intermediate Period through the reshaping of Egypt under the Ptolemies. The site was at various times a large town, a fort, a temple-town, and the home of a community of priests. This preliminary report on one season of excavation at el-Hibeh surveys remains from stratified deposits in two areas of first millennium BC occupation.
  • Robert J. Wenke is professor of archaeology in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Washington.

The Tomb Chamber of Hsw the Elder

David P. Silverman
1988. The American Research Center in Egypt
ix + 146 pages + 2 large foldouts; 29 cm. Includes bibliographical references ARCE reports series 10 (Publications of the Ancient Naukratis Project 3)
Cloth ISBN 0 936 770 17 1
Distributed by Eisenbrauns
Although a comparatively well-preserved Nile Delta monument, the tomb of Hsw the Elder at Kom el-Hisn, thought to date to the early Middle Kingdom, has received little attention since its discovery by C.C. Edgar in 1910. Only the tomb's limestone chamber remains; the mud-brick walls recorded by Edgar (which may have been the remnants of an adjacent room), have vanished. David Silverman's study of the tomb records the chamber's reliefs and inscriptions in more than 130 line drawings and plates, produced in the course of an epigraphic survey of the tomb. The volume includes early twentieth-century photographs from the archives of the Oriental Institute that document the lower part of the interior walls, now much eroded by salt efflorescence.
  • David P. Silverman is curator of the Egyptian section at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

Deir el-Ballas Preliminary Report on the Deir el-Ballas Expedition, 1980-1986

Peter Lacovara
1990. The American Research Center in Egypt
x + 67 pages (including figures) + 17 plates + 5 plans in pocket, 29 cm. Includes bibliographical references.
ARCE report series 12
Cloth ISBN 0 936 770 24 4
Distributed by Eisenbrauns
Deir el-Ballas, located on the east bank of the Nile, approximately twenty kilometers south of Dendara, was excavated at the beginning of the twentieth century by George Reisner, Albert Lythgoe, and F.W. Green under the sponsorship of Phoebe A. Hearst. These excavations uncovered a large royal palace, a settlement, and a series of cemeteries dating to the late Second Intermediate Period and the early Eighteenth Dynasty. The results of the Hearst excavations were never published, however, and records of the expedition were inadequate to understand fully the nature and history of the site. Four seasons of excavation sponsored by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, published here in a preliminary report, revealed a site far larger than the Hearst expedition records had indicated, including palace complexes, a group of large houses, and remains of a previously unrecorded ancient settlement.
  • Peter Lacovara, director of the Deir el-Ballas expedition from 1980 to 1986, is curator of Ancient Art at the Michael C. Carlos Museum, Atlanta.

The American Discovery of Ancient Egypt. 2 vols.

Edited by Nancy Thomas
1995-96. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art and The American Research Center in Egypt
  • Nancy Thomas is curator of ancient and Islamic art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Catalogue

275 pp; ills. 29 cm. Includes bibliographical references and index
Cloth ISBN 081 096 312 4 4
Paper ISBN 081 587 174 7 

Essays

188 pp.; ills. and maps; 29 cm. Includes bibliographical references and index
Cloth ISBN 081 096 313 2
Distributed by Harry J. Abrams, publishers; available through booksellers
American institutions have played an important role in the study of Ancient Egypt, yet Americans visiting their national museums, or Egypt itself, are not always aware of it. The American Discovery of Ancient Egypt, the catalogue of an exhibition that toured the United States from 1995 to 1996, together with a supplementary volume of essays, chronicles the study of Egypt by American scholars from the nineteenth century to the present, bringing together masterpieces from major museum collections throughout the United States.

The catalogue surveys 129 works dating from the Predynastic through the Meroitic period; the essays volume treats American contributions to the understanding of Egypt's early history, including prehistoric (Kent Weeks), Old Kingdom (Edward Brovarski), Middle Kingdom (James Allen and Dorothea Arnold), New Kingdom (David O'Connor and Lanny Bell), Third Intermediate Period and Late Period (Richard Fazzini), Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt (Robert Bianchi), as well as Bronze Age Nubia (Peter Lacovara) and Meroitic Nubia and the Sudan (Timothy Kendall).
  • Nancy Thomas is curator of ancient and Islamic art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

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