This study catalogues and analyses 329 statuettes and amulets from Thonis-Heracleion, a sunken city off the coast of Egypt that flourished between the 7th and 2nd centuries BC. This is the first study of votive statuettes and amulets from the Late and Ptolemaic Periods that presents a comprehensive corpus from a single site, complete with detailed catalogue entries and photographs. Although some of the most exceptional pieces were previously published in an exhibition catalogue, the majority are unpublished and it is the first time they have been studied and viewed as a whole. The material includes not only Egyptian-style bronzes, which are typical dedications of this period, but also a range of other materials including lead, terracotta, faience, and limestone. Some figures are represented in foreign style and attest to a small hellenized community at the site. By viewing multiple categories of votive material laterally and in context, important conclusions about cultural interactions and cult practice at Thonis-Heracleion come to light. Chapter One details the find context of the statuettes and amulets, followed by a discussion of their types and the cults to which they attest in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 outlines the objects’ primary functions and demonstrates the ways that lead and bronze were utilised differently. Chapter 4 focuses on bronze and lead production methods, particularly methods of replicable production that are indicative of technological exchange with other Mediterranean cultures. Finally, in Chapter 5, I look at how the votives reflect the cultural community at Thonis-Heracleion, and how they compare to others at sites throughout Egypt. Each chapter highlights how the archaeological context informs us about cultural interactions between Egyptians and Greeks and about the dynamics of cult practice at a Delta site in the Late and Ptolemaic Periods.

This thesis is concerned with the reaction of British M. P.'s to the Labor government's Palestinian policy 1945-48. The primary data comes from the British Parliamentary Debates (Commons) and works by British leaders. There are great differences among British political parties and between individuals within the parties in their reactions to and suggestions concerning the deteriorating situation in Palestine. Most politicians supported the Jews prior to the terrorist activity of 1947, but many then shifted to the Arab side. Due to the anti-Zionist policy of Ernest Bevin and Clement Attlee, a solution to the Palestinian problem was delayed; the Jews were driven to desperation; and Great Britain, previously a friend to the Jews, became their bitterest enemy.

This critical design project showcases obstacles that the Qatari culture and society impose on their female youth, hindering them from becoming independent individuals. It critiques the society and its social pressures. The project stimulates people to think by challenging their assumptions and perceptions, specifically social perception and judgment, family authority, and gender favoritism. This is achieved through hybridized accessories that are embedded with a meta-meaning that arouses curiosity, invites questions, and stimulates thoughts. Through the design of these appealing, high quality, and functionally viable everyday accessories, the project aims to communicate the social and cultural forces which impede Qatari female youths’ becoming individuals who dream, achieve, and thrive.

Across the world, women constitute the bottom segments of the informal labour market hierarchy, and the story is no different for Turkish women, except they are further constrained by a patriarchal family culture and corporatist welfare state structure which favours high-skilled workers in full-time employment. A reading of the literature on the reasons for participating in the informal sector suggested that workers either end up in the informal sector as a result of structural factors, such as high unemployment, horizontal and vertical labour market discrimination and limited job opportunities for the low-skilled and low-educated, or they actively chose to participate in the labour market to seize the opportunities it provides, such as evading tax and/or bureaucratic costs, or testing out business ideas. However, this dichotomous understanding provided little scope, if any, to understand why women also entered the informal sector, in ever growing numbers and what the gender-specific constraints and opportunities in the informal sector are. Against this background, this thesis aims to show that this dichotomous theorisation of the informal sector is an exaggeration of reality, and that women workers position presents a middle ground, in which they recognise the constraints on their ability to improve their lives but they are also not powerless. Hence, by focusing on the variety of survival strategies used by women workers in the informal sector, the thesis attempts to show the choice among these strategies, including the conditions in which these strategies can be adopted and the barriers to do so.

L'objectif de cette thèse est de décrire et d'expliquer le comportement du marché et des entreprises dans les pays émergents du Moyen-Orient et de la région du Golfe dont les économies ont engagé avec vigueur des programmes de réformes systématiques pour s'intégrer au marché mondial. Le risque politique est l'une des données majeures de cette région et pourrait avoir un impact significatif sur le domaine financier. Dans les faits cependant, le potentiel de ces économies, conjugué à la volonté des gouvernements de libéraliser l'économie et de développer le domaine de l'investissement, attire les investisseurs étrangers soucieux de rediriger leurs investissements après les dérives de la crise financière mondiale. La thèse se compose de trois essais. Le premier traite de l'effet des caractéristiques des entreprises et des pays concernés sur la structure du capital. Il se subdivise en deux parties: l'une concerne les seuls groupes d'entreprises, l'autre porte sur l'ensemble des entreprises cotées en bourse. Le deuxième essai s'intéresse à la gouvernance d'entreprise sur les marchés boursiers ainsi qu'à l'impact de l'application des normes de communication financière sur les valeurs boursières et sur les asymétries d'information. Le troisième essai est consacré à l'impact des facteurs liés à l'entreprise et au pays concerné sur les dépenses en capital de l'entreprise. Un chapitre introductif fait préalablement au lecteur une présentation de la région quant aux opportunités, obstacles et risques. Il en ressort au final d'intéressants résultats qui expliquent pour partie le comportement des entreprises et des investisseurs dans la région et qui ouvrent la voie à d'autres questions méritant investigations et explications. Cette thèse peut constituer, pour les économies émergentes, une aide à la planification de leur processus de développement. Elle représente un maillon important dans les recherches financières portant sur une région qui n'avait jamais été étudiée auparavant sous cet angle de façon aussi large, profonde et systématique. / The objective of this thesis is to describe and to explain corporate and market behavior in the emerging markets of the Middle East and the Gulf States region. These economies have started enthusiastically extensive reform programs to integrate into the world market. Political risk is a main feature in the region and can hold a significant effect on financial aspects. Meanwhile, the rich capabilities and capacities of these economies along with the governments' intent to liberalize the economies and develop their investment arena attract, in fact, foreign investors who want to redirect their investments to emerging markets after the deteriorations of the world financial crisis. The thesis is comprised of three essays: the first is about the effect of company and country characteristics on capital structure. This article is divided into two sub-articles; one is applied only on the group corporations and the other is applied on all the listed companies in all the markets. The second essay is about corporate governance in stock markets, and the effect of applying disclosure standards on stock prices and on asymmetric information. The third essay is about the effect of firm and country factors on firm's capital expenditure. Also an introductory article is prepared to introduce the region to the reader within the context of opportunities, obstacles, and risks. Very interesting findings evolved which explain some aspects of the behavior of corporations and investors in the region. The results open the gate to specific important questions and topics that need to be explained and investigated. This thesis can assist these emerging economies in the planning for the development process. It will be an important stone in our future financial researches on the region which has never been explored before so widely, deeply, and extensively.

The master thesis named The Transformation of Presentation of the Middle East Population in Post-9/11 American Films aims to closely analyze eight chosen mainstream American films with the help of the combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. The plot of the observed films has to be placed in the Middle East, picture terrorism or contain the Arabs or Muslims as characters. On the basis of a wide range of criteria and the final comparison, the thesis focuses on the comparison of the Hollywood movies which were created before and after the terrorist attacks in New York in 2001. The theoretical chapters are dedicated to the introduction of the social construction of reality, stereotyping and one-dimensional description of the Arabs in Hollywood films and mainly to the deep introduction of West and Islamic culture, not only from the historic but also cultural and valuable point of view. The applied methodology follows after. The detailed analysis of the chosen films is accompanied by photographs and excerpts directly from the films to help readers to understand the differences as much as possible. This part is followed by the final evaluation of the analysis on the basis of the comparison of the observed criteria. The hypothesis is confirmed at the end but there are also some other important...

Cette thèse traite la question des frontières terrestres du Liban selon les règles et la jurisprudence du droit international public. Elle retrace la composition du bloc territorial libanais en se référent aux archives des Etats mandataires au Levant, la France et l’Angleterre, pour comprendre le choix et la répartition entre les Etats des frontières actuelles. Cette étude passe ensuite à analyser la spécificité juridique de chaque tronçon de la frontière libanaise et à étudier les règles de droit international qui lui sont applicables. En effet, la frontière libanaise n’est pas homogène dans son étendue, elle se découpe en plusieurs secteurs représentant chacun une spécificité juridique propre. Ainsi, la frontière au Sud et au Nord et une partie de la frontière Est, sont régit par des conventions de frontières établies par le mandat français, alors que le reste de la frontière Est, est régit par l’application de la règle de l’uti possidetis juris. L’étude s’arrête également sur les secteurs litigieux de la frontière entre le Liban et Israël dans le secteur du Sud d’un coté, et le Liban et la Syrie dans le secteur Est de la frontière d’un autre coté. Elle avance également une nouvelle approche pour le règlement du litige des Hameaux de Chebaa entre ces trois pays frontaliers avec l’intervention des Nations Unies. / This thesis addresses the issue of the Lebanese boundaries in accordance with the rules and jurisprudence of international law. It retraces the composition of the Lebanese territorial block referring to the mandatory archives of the States in the Levant, France and England, to understand the selection and allocation among the present boundaries between the States. The study goes on to analyze the legal specificity of each section of the Lebanese border and to study the rules of international law applicable to it. Indeed, the Lebanese border is not homogeneous in its scope; it is divided into several sectors each representing a specific legal entity. Thus, the Southern and Northern borders and part of the Eastern border, are governed by boundaries conventions established by the French mandate, while the rest of the eastern border, is governed by the application of the uti possidetis juris rule. The study also stops on the disputed sectors from the areas between Lebanon and Israel in the South from one side, and Lebanon and Syria in the eastern border on the other side. It also suggests a new approach of the Chebaa’s Farms dispute between these three neighboring countries with the United Nations’ intervention.

L'objectif de cette thèse est d'étudier la politique de la Grande-Bretagne vis-à-vis du conflit israélo-arabe au prisme de ses intérêts au Proche-Orient entre la première guerre israélo-arabe (1948-1949) jusqu'à la guerre des Six-Jours en 1967. Nous avons essayé de préciser, en ce sens, qu'en plus des intérêts politiques, géostratégiques et économiques, cette politique a été aussi marquée par les changements des rapports de force qui s'imposaient inévitablement dans le monde entier, notamment l'avènement des États-Unis et de l'URSS comme superpuissances mondiales, le nationalisme arabe…etc. Dans ce cadre d'intérêts politiques et économiques, nous avons souligné que la création de l'État d'Israël répondait aux besoins stratégiques des puissances occidentales au Moyen-Orient. D'ailleurs, cette approche prouvera sa validité dès 1956 quand l'État d'Israël va jouer un rôle déterminant pendant l'expédition de Suez. Nous avons mis l'accent sur la place qu'occupait l'industrie du pétrole et les intérêts commerciaux dans le processus de la décolonisation britannique du Moyen-Orient pendant les années 1950 et 1960. Bien que l'étude de la politique britannique au Proche-Orient soit négligée, et ce, en raison de son « déclassement politique », notre recherche a bien montré que la Grande-Bretagne a joué un rôle aussi important que celui des Américains dans la sauvegarde de leurs intérêts à travers une « gestion » commune des affaires du Moyen-Orient. / The aim of this thesis is to study the British policy towards the Arab-Israeli conflict through the prism of British interests in the Middle East from the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948-1949 to the Six-Day War in 1967. In addition to economic and political interests, we show that in the years under review the British policy has also been marked by a change in the world balance of power, namely the emergence of the United States and the Soviet Union as the world's leading superpowers, Arab nationalism ... etc. In this context, we emphasize that the creation of the State of Israel met the strategic needs of Western powers in the Middle East. This approach will prove its effectiveness only eight years after the creation of Israel when the latter played a decisive role during the tripartite invasion of Egypt in late 1956. Moreover, we point out the place occupied by oil industry and commercial interests in the process of British decolonization in the Middle East in the 1950s and 1960s. The study of British foreign policy in the Middle East has been neglected because of the “demise of Britain's political supremacy” worldwide. Nevertheless, we show that Britain has played a role as important as that of the United States in safeguarding their common interests in the Middle East through a close collaboration.

Depuis l’accession au pouvoir de l’Emir Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani en 1995, le Qatar a considérablement évolué pour devenir un acteur incontournable dans la médiation internationale. Ce travail a pour objet d’étudier et d’analyser les évolutions de la politique étrangère qatarie depuis 1995, la nouvelle place de l’Émirat dans les relations internationales, ainsi qu’au sein des pays du Golfe. Il permet d’observer que le Qatar joue un rôle désormais prépondérant tant dans la médiation que dans les relations internationales / Since the arrival of the Emir Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani to the power in 1995, Qatar has become a major player in international mediation. This thesis aims to study and analyze the evolution of Qatari foreign policy since 1995, the new position of the Emirate in international relations and within the Gulf region. It can be observed that Qatar plays now a new role in the mediation as well in the international relations

Les rapports turco-européens et turco-moyen-orientaux sont essentiellement influencés par les actions du Parti de la Justice et du Développement (AKP) à partir de son arrivée au pouvoir en 2002 jusqu’à nos jours. Cette thèse cherche à démontrer comment les changements réalisés par l’islamisme turc durant cette période ont impacté la politique étrangère du pays. D’une part, la recherche analyse le renouveau du courant conservateur en Turquie et son emprise progressive sur la société, jusque-là dominée par l’establishment kémaliste. L’application de la doctrine Davutoğlu privilégie une vision multidimensionnelle et civilisationnelle des relations internationales, et réconforte les tenants d’une conception novatrice de l’islamisme turc et la visibilité accrue des facteurs religieux dans la société. D’autre part, les années 2007-2010 sont marquées par la consolidation de l’AKP et l’accentuation des valeurs de l’islam qui aboutissent à une division de la société turque et une désillusion de l’Europe. Enfin, le déclenchement des révoltes populaires du Printemps arabe en 2011 annonce aussi un tournant majeur dans la gestion des relations extérieures turques avec le monde arabe. Cette période est également caractérisée par le début du renforcement d’un autoritarisme provoquant l’accroissement de la polarisation de la société. Le quatrième mandat gouvernemental de l’AKP, débuté en 2015, se trouve dès lors confronté à la multiplication de défis intérieurs et extérieurs pour le mouvement islamique turc. / The relationship of Turkey with Europe and the Middle East is greatly influenced by the actions of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) from coming to power in 2002 until nowadays. This thesis tries to make clear how the changes realized by the Turkish Islam during this period impacted on the foreign policy of the country. On the one hand, the research analyzes the revival of the conservative movement in Turkey and its progressive influence on the society, up to there dominated by the kemalist establishment. The application of the Davutoğlu’s doctrine favors a multidimensional and civilizational vision of the international relations, and comforts the upholders of an innovative design of the Turkish Islam and the greater visibility of the religious factors in the society. On the other hand, the years 2007-2010 are marked by the consolidation of the AKP and the accentuation of the Islamic values, ending in a division of the Turkish society and a disappointment of Europe. Finally the outbreak of popular uprisings of the Arab Spring in 2011 also announces a major turning point in the management of the Turkish external relations with the Arab World. This period is also characterized by the beginning of the strengthening of authoritarianism leading to the increase of the polarization in the society. The fourth term of the AKP’s government, begun in 2015, becomes thereby characterized by the increase of internal and external challenges for the Turkish Islamic movement.