The thesis examines to what extent copyright holders can enforce the online reproduction and communication rights against online service providers in Egypt. The objective of the thesis is therefore to highlight that the existing Egyptian copyright law 2002/82 is insufficient to impose liability on internet service providers, both substantively and also with regards to enforcement. Various recommendations are thus made to improve the legislative framework in Egypt, all with a view of achieving that a fair balance is struck for all those parties, who/which are involved in digital communications, particularly online end users, so that their rights to online privacy and access to information are preserved. For this purpose, a comparative methodology has been adopted and recourse is made to US and European laws. This comparative approach is further complemented by a critical examination of existing deficiencies within the legislative liability regime for internet service providers in the US and Europe in order to ensure that foreign laws are not merely transplanted, but that the best and most suitable legislative framework is adopted by the Egyptian legislator.

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The focus of this study was analytical investigations of Egyptian paintings, mainly Coptic icons and Islamic wooden ceilings, dating from 1300-1900 using multiinstrumental techniques. Twenty three Coptic icons and three wooden ceilings dated from different periods and painted by different painters in case of icons were examined. The materials used including pigments, media, varnishes, ground layers and gold layers. The surface stratigraphy of paint samples, their layered structured and the composition of materials used in each layer were analysed. Variations in painting techniques, pigments palettes, paint media and varnishes applied in Egyptian paintings according to painters, time and type of paintings were revealed. A total of twenty-eight organic and inorganic pigments were identified in this study, of which nine have never been previously included as a part of the Egyptian pigment palettes, namely; smalt, lapis lazuli, indigo, pararealgar, Prussian blue, chrome yellow, barium yellow, barium white and hydromagnesite. The identification of hydromagnesite, which has never been to date considered as a pigment either in Egypt or elsewhere and the identification of smalt from the mid-14th century, whose reported earliest large scale use was in the 16th century. Two types of resins were identified as a constituent of the oil/resin varnish applied on Coptic icons of which Venice turpentine has been identified for the first time as an ingredient of Egyptian varnishes. The identification of mosaic gold in an 18th C. icon, a novel usage of dammar resin and the multilayered structure of the white ground layers were revealed. / Egyptian Ministry of Higher Educations

By using the technique of photogrammetry for the 3D visualization of ancient Egyptian coffins decorated with magical texts and iconography, this project aims at building up a new digital platform for an in-depth study of the ancient Egyptian funerary culture and its media. It has started in August 2015 through the support of a Mellon Fellowship for the Digital Humanities at UC Berkeley and up until now it has focused on ancient Egyptian coffins kept at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology of UC Berkeley. The main outcome will be a digital platform that allows to display a coffin in 3D and where users will be able to pan, rotate, and zoom in on the coffin, clicking on areas of text to highlight them and view an annotated translation together with other metadata (transcription of the hieroglyphic text, bibliography, textual variants, museological data, provenance, etc.)

In this study, I extended input methods for the Japanese language to Egyptian hieroglyphics. There are several systems that capable of inputting Egyptian hieroglyphic writing. However, they do not allow us to directly input hieroglyphs, for instance, into MS Word. The new Egyptian hieroglyphic input system being reported here, developed using technology used for inputting Japanese writing, is quite unique and allows the direct input of hieroglyphs, for example, into MS Word. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and the Japanese writing system (with its mixture of hiragana, katakana and kanji) share basic graphemic characteristics. For instance, Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic logograms are functionally similar to Japanese kanji logograms (Chinese characters), whereas Egyptian hieroglyphic phonograms are functionally similar to Japanese hiragana and katakana syllabic phonograms. The input technology for Japanese makes it possible to input a mixture of logograms and phonograms, and phonetic complements. This technology is a well-organized and handy tool to input Japanese writing into computers, having been used by over 100 million people. I applied this technology to Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic inputting and created a new intuitive hieroglyphic inputting system using Google Japanese Input. Using this method, anyone can directly write Egyptian hieroglyphic writing into software like MS Word. If the transcription of an ancient Egyptian word is entered, the correct hieroglyphs are generated by this system. If there are multiple options for any phonemic combinations that use other combinations of phonetic complements or determinatives, a dropdown window with a list of several combinations of glyphs appears and the user can choose the desired combination.

“The Ancient Egyptian Demonology Project: Second Millennium BCE” was intended and funded as a three-year project (2013-2016) to explore the world of Ancient Egyptian demons in the 2nd millennium BC. It intends to create a classification and ontology of benevolent and malevolent demons. Whereas ancient Egyptians did not use a specific term denoting “demons”, liminal beings known from various other cultures such as δαίμονες, ghosts, angels, Mischwesen, genies, etc., were nevertheless described in texts and illustrations. The project aims to collect philological, iconographical and archaeological evidence to understand the religious beliefs, practices, interactions and knowledge not only of the ancient Egyptians’ daily life but also their perception of the afterlife. Till today scholars, as well as interested laymen, have had no resource to consult for specific examples of those beings, except for rather general encyclopaedias that include all kinds of divine beings or the Iconography of Deities and Demons (IDD) project that is ongoing. Neither provides, however, a searchable platform for both texts and images. The database created by the Demonology Project: 2K is designed to remedy this gap. The idea is to provide scholars and the public with a database that allows statistical analyses and innovative data visualisation, accessible and augmentable from all over the world to stimulate the dialogue and open communication not only within Egyptology but also with neighbouring disciplines. For the time-span of the three year project a pilot database was planned as a foundation for further data-collection and analysis. The data that were chosen date to the 2nd Millennium BCE and originate from objects of daily life (headrests and ivory wands), as well as from objects related to the afterlife, (coffins and ‘Book of the Dead’ manuscripts). This material, connected by its religious purposes, nevertheless provides a cross-section through ancient Egyptian religious practice. The project is funded by the Leverhulme Trust and includes Kasia Szpakowska (director) who supervises the work of the two participating PhD students in Egyptology. The project does not include funds for computer scientists or specialists in digital humanities. Therefore, the database is designed, developed and input by the members of the team only. The focus of my presentation will be the structure of the database that faces the challenge to include both textual and iconographical evidence. I will explain the organisation of the data, search patterns and the opportunities of their visualisation and possible research outcome. Furthermore, I will discuss the potentials the database already possesses and might generate in the future for scholars and the public likewise. Since the evidence belongs to numerous collections from all over the world, I would like to address the problems of intellectual property and copyright with the solution we pursue for releasing the database for registered usage onto the internet.

This thesis studies interactions between Egypt and the Aegean during the Middle to Late Bronze Ages, focusing on reciprocal influences in the spheres of healing, warfare, and legitimation of power. Chapter 1 provides an introduction, starting with an overview of previous research. The next two sections discuss a couple of issues of general significance, namely chronology and the Egyptian terminology for Aegean peoples and locations. The last two sections deal with issues of methodology and explain the aims of this work. Chapter 2 is devoted to healing practices. Like the two chapters that follow, it begins with a cross-cultural comparison between the Egyptian and Aegean milieus. The basis for the discussion is provided by references to Crete in a couple of Egyptian medical texts. Other potential indications of an exchange of medical lore include containers that might have been used for medical preparations, amulets with healing properties, and possible similarities in practices and medical terminology. Chapter 3 treats warfare, considering it in its broadest sense as a cultural phenomenon, besides looking for evidence suggesting military interaction or cooperation between Egypt and the Aegean. The material under scrutiny ranges from the decoration of weapons to the exchange of raw materials destined for the production of military equipment. Ideology and iconography also contribute to the discussion. Chapter 4 explores the possibility of Egyptian influence in the development of the Aegean ideologies of power and the exploitation of foreign contacts as a source of legitimation. The main body of the chapter deals with the role of exotica in the pursuit of prestige. Some potential examples of the adoption of foreign customs and ideas are also discussed. Chapter 5 summarises the conclusions of the previous chapters concisely and discusses how they may fit within the broader context of the study of Egyptian–Aegean relations. Finally, some possible lines of research for the future are suggested.

Thesis (PhD (Ancient Studies))--University of Stellenbosch, 2007. / This dissertation sets out to test the hypothesis that Egyptian and Hellenistic connections to Jewish beliefs about the functioning of angels facilitated the reception of Christianity. The method of investigation involved a close reading, combined with a History of Religions methodology, of certain texts with marked angelological content. The presence of certain motifs, especially “throne” and “sun/fire”, which were identified as characteristic of angelic functioning, were compared across the entire spectrum of texts. In this way the diachronic development of major angelological motifs became apparent, and the synchronic connections between the respective cultural contexts became noticeable. The course the research followed is reflected in the list of Contents. Ancient Egyptian myth and ritual associated with solar worship, together with Divine Council imagery, provides a pattern of mediation between heaven and earth via two crucial religious concepts which underly Jewish beliefs about the functioning of angels: 1) the concept of a supreme God as the king of the Gods as reflected in Divine Council imagery, and 2) the unique Egyptian institution of the king as the divine son of god (also related to the supremacy of the sun god). The blending of these two concepts can be seen in Ezekiel 1 and 10, where the throne of God is the source of angelic mediation between heaven and earth. An important stimulus to change was the vexed issue of theodicy, which in the traumatic history of the Israelites / Jews, forced new ways of thinking about angels, who in some contexts were implicated in evil and suffering on earth. In the hellenistic period, attainment to the throne of God in heaven becomes the goal of heavenly ascent, reflected in various ways in all three cultural contexts, and specifically by means of merkabah mysticism in the Jewish context; the basic concern is deification of human beings. It was this seminal cultural mixture which mediated Christianity as an outcome of Jewish angelology. The characteristic ambiguity of Jewish descriptions of angelic appearances, as reflected in the Hebrew Bible and in the Book of Revelation, functioned purposefully in this regard. Analysis of the distribution of angelological motifs amongst the Christian texts reflects Jewish angelological traditions, both in terms of merkabah mysticism in the Letter to the Hebrews, and in angelomorphic appearances of Jesus in the Book of Revelation.

<p>“Globalizing the Sculptural Landscape of Isis and Sarapis Cults in Roman Greece,” asks questions of cross-cultural exchange and viewership of sculptural assemblages set up in sanctuaries to the Egyptian gods. Focusing on cognitive dissonance, cultural imagining, and manipulations of time and space, I theorize ancient globalization as a set of loosely related processes that shifted a community's connections with place. My case studies range from the 3rd century BCE to the 2nd century CE, including sanctuaries at Rhodes, Thessaloniki, Dion, Marathon, Gortyna, and Delos. At these sites, devotees combined mainstream Greco-Roman sculptures, Egyptian imports, and locally produced imitations of Egyptian artifacts. In the last case, local sculptors represented Egyptian subjects with Greco-Roman naturalistic styles, creating an exoticized visual ideal that had both local and global resonance. My dissertation argues that the sculptural assemblages set up in Egyptian sanctuaries allowed each community to construct complex narratives about the nature of the Egyptian gods. Further, these images participated in a form of globalization that motivated local communities to adopt foreign gods and reinterpret them to suit local needs. </p><p> I begin my dissertation by examining how Isis and Sarapis were represented in Greece. My first chapter focuses on single statues of Egyptian gods, describing their iconographies and stylistic tendencies through examples from Corinth and Gortyna. By comparing Greek examples with images of Sarapis, Isis, and Harpokrates from around the Mediterranean, I demonstrate that Greek communities relied on globally available visual tropes rather than creating site or region-specific interpretations. In the next section, I examine what other sources viewers drew upon to inform their experiences of Egyptian sculpture. In Chapter 3, I survey the textual evidence for Isiac cult practice in Greece as a way to reconstruct devotees’ expectations of sculptures in sanctuary contexts. At the core of this analysis are Apuleius’ Metamorphoses and Plutarch’s De Iside et Osiride, which offer a Greek perspective on the cult’s theology. These literary works rely on a tradition of aretalogical inscriptions—long hymns produced from roughly the late 4th century B.C.E. into the 4th century C.E. that describe the expansive syncretistic powers of Isis, Sarapis, and Harpokrates. This chapter argues that the textual evidence suggests that devotees may have expected their images to be especially miraculous and likely to intervene on their behalf, particularly when involved in ritual activity inside the sanctuary.</p><p> In the final two chapters, I consider sculptural programs and ritual activity in concert with sanctuary architecture. My fourth chapter focuses on sanctuaries where large amounts of sculpture were found in underground water crypts: Thessaloniki and Rhodes. These groups of statues can be connected to a particular sanctuary space, but their precise display contexts are not known. By reading these images together, I argue that local communities used these globally available images to construct new interpretations of these gods, ones that explored the complex intersections of Egyptian, Greek, and Roman identities in a globalized Mediterranean. My final chapter explores the Egyptian sanctuary at Marathon, a site where exceptional preservation allows us to study how viewers would have experienced images in architectural space. Using the Isiac visuality established in Chapter 3, I reconstruct the viewer's experience, arguing that the patron, Herodes Atticus, intended his viewer to inform his experience with the complex theology of Middle Platonism and prevailing elite attitudes about Roman imperialism.</p><p> Throughout my dissertation, I diverge from traditional approaches to culture change that center on the concepts of Romanization and identity. In order to access local experiences of globalization, I examine viewership on a micro-scale. I argue that viewers brought their concerns about culture change into dialogue with elements of cult, social status, art, and text to create new interpretations of Roman sculpture sensitive to the challenges of a highly connected Mediterranean world. In turn, these transcultural perspectives motivated Isiac devotees to create assemblages that combined elements from multiple cultures. These expansive attitudes also inspired Isiac devotees to commission exoticized images that brought together disparate cultures and styles in an eclectic manner that mirrored the haphazard way that travel brought change to the Mediterranean world. My dissertation thus offers a more theoretically rigorous way of modeling culture change in antiquity that recognizes local communities’ agency in producing their cultural landscapes, reconciling some of the problems of scale that have plagued earlier approaches to provincial Roman art.</p><p> These case studies demonstrate that cultural anxieties played a key role in how viewers experienced artistic imagery in the Hellenistic and Roman Mediterranean. This dissertation thus offers a new component in our understanding of ancient visuality, and, in turn, a better way to analyze how local communities dealt with the rise of connectivity and globalization.</p> / Dissertation

(in English): In this thesis several types of temporal verbal constructions in the Egyptian dialect of Arabic are to be discussed. The main focus was headed on the verbal forms connected with the most occuring auxiliary/temporal verbs kān and ba'a. An inextricable part of the thesis was a detailed insight in the theory of Arabic verbs, both in Modern Standard Arabic and Egyptian Dialect. Our aim was to find out the frequency of these verbal forms, comparing their appearance and their contextual embedding. For the purpose of the analysis an original corpus of texts in Egyptian dialect (more than 700 thousands words) was created. The sources of the corpus came almost exclusively from texts of Egyptian bloggers. Last but not least programm PERL served as the tool for our analysis - statistically and contextually allowing working out of all possible combinations of verbal forms in question.