Through observation, participation, questioning and living with the people of the United Arab Emirates, Dr Kanafani has gathered interesting and original information on food and body rituals. Habits and practices in coastal cities as well as in desert dwellings, oases and settlements, were carefully surveyed and resported. This volume presents the author's observations and interpretations of these rituals, along with many original drawings and photographs.

English, 1983, 134 pages, 38 photographs, 70 figures, bibliography, cloth, $20.

There are basically two themes to these essays: an attempt to define the relative social status of women holding certain titles, and to show that harems and concubines did not exist in the Middle Kingdom, at least as recognized institutions. The former theme is approached primarily through official and religious titles held by women and their husbands, the latter theme by examining some key terms said to refer to harems and concubines. Further essays give new interpretations to the famous genealogy of tomb 9 at El-Kab and the so-called “harem” of King Nebhepetre Mentuhotep.

English, 1986, 198 pages, 3 indexes, hardcover, $12.

The titles collected in this index belong primarily to the Middle Kingdom from the reunification in the Eleventh Dynasty to the end of the Thirteenth. The book is in two parts, Part One being the index proper. Individual entries give the Egyptian spelling, transliteration and translation, and references to where the title appears and to where it is discussed. Part Two is a glossary of the individual words used in titles with a discussion of their meaning and use. The work is an invaluable guide to the researcher interested in the study of the social and political structure of the Middle Kingdom.

English, 1983, 221 pages, hardcover, $18.

Small Change in Ancient Beirut – The Coin Finds from BEY 006 and 045: Persian, Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine Periods by Kevin Butcher, Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Warwick, is the first of a special series of Berytus Archaeological Studies (vol. XLV-XLVI), subtitled “Archaeology of the Beirut Souks.”  It presents the results of excavations conducted by an archaeological team from the American University of Beirut (AUB) in collaboration with a group of British archaeologists and organizations at a group of sites in and around the souks of post-war Beirut between 1994 and 1997.  

This volume deals with the numismatic and economic history of Beirut and the region based on roughly 7000 coins excavated stratigraphically from the AUB Souks excavations.  Almost all of the coins found represent low denominations made of base metals.  In light of the relatively few coin reports that have been published from the area of the eastern Mediterranean, this issue of Berytus is a valuable resource for both numismatists and scholars of ancient exchange and trade.  It provides a detailed analysis of the coins, as well as selected comparisons to coins discovered at other sites in order to put the findings into a wider regional context.  Furthermore, it provides an important point of reference for the forthcoming publication of the other finds from the AUB Souks excavations.

Berytus Archaeological Studies is an annual publication of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at the American University of Beirut.  It has been published continuously since 1934.

The French expedition to the ancient Phoenician city of Byblos (modern Jebeil) from 1928 to 1932, discovered a group of nine texts carved in stone or stamped on copper plates. It was clear that the writing system was syllabic, not alphabetic, and was very closely related to Egyptian hieroglyphic characters. This volume presents a deciphering of eight of those texts, together with philological treatment of the language, and places the language into the context of ancient historical and social processes. The language of the texts appears from internal evidence to be a very archaic West Semitic, and antedates the separation of the Arabic and Canaanite branches of the Semitic language family. Evidence from the texts supports the conclusion that Arabic originated in the coastal regions of the Eastern Mediterranean, known in the classical period as Phoenicia and Palestine, in the Early Bronze Age before 2000 BC. The writing system is shown to be the missing link between Egyptian and the late Canaanite alphabet.

English, 1986, 179 pages, bibliography, hardcover, $20.