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Jill Kamil’s CHRISTIANITY IN THE LAND OF THE PHARAOHS: The Coptic Orthodox Church, is published in hardback by Routledge London and New York, and in Paperback by The American University in Cairo Press, this book places Egypt’s Coptic minority in historical context. It covers the whole span of Egyptian history from Pharaonic, through Roman, Chalcedonian and Islamic times to modern, and illustrates how the Christian ideal of poverty, chastity and piety is acted in different modes of behaviour throughout Egypt. In particular, it shows that Coptic art is an essential link in the whole chain of Egyptian art history.

LABIB HABACHI – The Life and Legacy of an Egyptologist, published by the American University in Cairo Press, is a long overdue biography is of Egypt’s most perceptive and productive Egyptologist. Here is a survey of Egyptian archaeology in the twentieth century in which Habachi’s work is measured against that of his best-known contemporaries, and here too is the full story of his major discovery on Elephantine in 1946 which was shelved by Egypt’s Antiquities Department for thirty years. When finally released for publication it became the subject of a heated controversy between Habachi and Gerhardt Haeny of the Swiss Institute of Archaeology in Cairo that was never resolved.

Kamil says, “An insight into the confrontations between scholars; details of what happened when the Antiquities Service was nationalized after the 1952 revolution; and Labib Habachi’s unhappy discord with the national institution during most of his career, could not have been understood except through his personal experiences….”

What scholars say:

“Labib Habachi was a major figure in mid-twentieth-century Egyptology and this biography provides a valuable perspective on the development of Egyptian Egyptology and an important chapter in the history of ideas and cultures”. (Jason Thompson, author of the definitive biography of the Egyptologist Sir Gardner Wilkinson)

“Labib Habachi was a dear friend for over ten years and a respected colleague for nearly forty. His role in helping to establish indigenous Egyptian Egyptology—and his impact on Egyptology generally—was formidable. Labib was – and continues to be – a role model for Egyptian Egyptology students, and this book deserves to be also published in Arabic.” (Kent R. Weeks, Professor Emeritus of Egyptology, The American University in Cairo and Director, The Theban Mapping Project)

“Labib Habachi was an exceptional Egyptologist with unique knowledge of the historical topography of Egypt from Aswan to the Delta. He was the first to identify Avaris (the Hyksos capital) and Piramesse (the city of Ramses II), with the area of Qantir and Tell el-Dab’a”. (Rainer Stadelman, retired director of the German Archaeological Institute, Cairo).

“Labib Habachi had an encyclopaedic knowledge of ancient Egypt and was always generous with his time, helpful and good-humoured”. (Torgny Säve-Söderbergh, Department of Egyptology, Uppsala University, Sweden).

Two ground-breaking books provide an unique perspective of the Egypt’s

Pharaonic and Christian heritages

LABIB HABACHI – The Life and Legacy of an Egyptologist is the biography a major figure in mid-twentieth-century Egyptology, an Egyptian who was marginalised for most of his career.

CHRISTIANITY IN THE LAND OF THE PHARAOHS – The Coptic Orthodox Church weaves together
historical research with absorbing stories that offer a captivating insight into a side of Egypt that will be new
to many readers.

Jill Kamil, a writer specialising in Egyptology and Coptic history who has lived in Egypt since 1954, is the author of The Ancient Egyptians: How they Lived and Worked (1976), published in revised form as The Ancient Egyptians: Life in the Old Kingdom in 1985. Her unique format guidebooks to Luxor, Sakkara and Memphis, and Upper Egypt and Nubia, were first published in the l970’s, and came out in revised editions in 1996 under the title Jill Kamil Guides. They are still on the market. Kamil has also written history and guides to Aswan and Abu Simbel, and The Monastery of Saint Catherine in Sinai, published in 1991 and 1993 respectively. She contributed chapters on these subjects to two titles in the Insight Guide series – Egypt and The Nile.

For the last fifteen years she has been founding Heritage Page editor of Al-Ahram Weekly, Egypt’s leading English language newspaper, for which she has written on subjects related to Pharaonic Egypt and early Christianity.