Naqada and Ballas

Facsimile edition of the 1974 reissue of Flinders Petrie’s 1896 account of the excavation (mainly) of tombs in the area around Ballas and Naqada on the edge of the Egyptian desert, 30 miles north of Thebes.   Several areas of the ancient towns of Deir and Nubt – the latter identified as the center of Set worship – and more tombs were investigated. At each cemetery, traditionally furnished Old and Middle Kingdom tombs were examined and many proved to have been plundered and reused in antiquity. Petrie named these later burials as of a New Race and describes them in detail at Ballas and Naqada. A collection of mostly Palaeolithic flint artefacts is also described.   This series comprises facsimile re-issues of typological catalogues produced between 1898 and 1937 by W.M. Flinders Petrie, based on his vast collection of Egyptian artefacts which now reside in The Petrie Museum of Egyptian and Sudanese Archaeology, University College, London. Long out of print, the catalogues were re-issued in facsimile by publishers Aris & Phillips in the 1970s alongside newly-commissioned titles by contemporary experts. Petrie’s catalogues remain invaluable source material today. The Oxbow Classics in Egyptology series now makes a selection of these important resources available again in print for a new generation of students and scholars.