Faculté de Lettres et Sciences Humaines

Ancient Egyptian civilization is usually mentioned as a theocratic and particularly religious system of society that managed to unite Upper and Lower Egypt since c. 3200 BC, presenting several artistic and cultural developments. Not only the pyramids per se, but also the ancient Egyptian funerary texts offer modern Egyptologists a glimpse of the deep religious feeling and the use of allegories and metaphors as virtual vehicles for the expression of significant philosophical and proto-scientific truths. The Logistics of the ancient pyramidbuilders were particularly well organized and current research has shown that they had done everything with a remarkable precision, using simple machines and their own intelligent minds and their perfectly organized hierarchical society. Their Mathematics and computational methods, on the other hand, clearly prove that they were calculating using virtually the way modern computers calculate, based on the binary system, although their Arithmetic was rooted on a decimal numerical system. This last is also attested by the fact that the fractions used by them were (almost 99%) only unitary, exactly as modern computers are doing. In this paper we shall endeavour to present and critically discuss the following: 1. A brief review and introduction to the interdisciplinary domain of informatization in Egyptology; 2. An overview of the ancient Egyptian mathematical and computational forma mentis. In the first instance we shall present the principal developments of the fruitful co-existence and collaboration of Informatics and Egyptology for the last 50 years, putting emphasis on the outstanding work of Emeritus Prof. Dr Dirk van der Plas (Holland) and his team [CCER, in the digitization of important ancient Egyptian texts, like e. g.: the Coffin Texts, as well as in the evolution of the best hieroglyphic-editor software ever conceived (WINGLYPH V. 2)]. In the second instance, we shall briefly discuss the basics of ancient Egyptian Mathematics, their computational pre-or even proto-scientific techniques and the simple operations, showing that the ancient Egyptian mind and culture was indeed very advanced and from a certain point of view, constituting the precursor for the developments of modern Science.

This volume publishes 136 papers and posters presented during the Congress. Topics discussed here range from archaeology, religion, philology, mummy investigations and archaeometry to history, offering an up-to-date account of research in these fields.

 3 RD CIRCULAR  The scopes of this Conference have been already dealt with extensively in the previous Circulars. Here we are going to present some practical information for the Delegates, concerning the venue of the Conference, Athens and the Conference itself. We fully desire that all the Delegates are happy and enjoy their stay in Athens in the most sufficient and easy way! We regret that not all Delegates managed to come to participate and to be with us! Starting from Athens, you will find all the information you might need (and much more on: transports from and to the airport, buses, metro lines, tram, taxis, points of interest, art, kitchen, & c.) in the following web-sites (the last-one being that of Hotel TITANIA):

A volume in honoerem Prof. Dr Dr Alicia Maravelia edited mainly by Dr Nadine Guilhou (with the help of Mrs Antigoni Maniati), published by Archaeopress (Series Egyptology, No 17) in 2016. It contains contributions from about 40 scholars and worldwide renowned personalities, to honour her and her work (colleagues from 15 Countries, approx. 400 pages).

A Mycenaean tholos tomb consists of a circular, subterranean burial chamber, sometimes referred to as a thalamos, roofed by a corbelled vault and approached by a dromos that narrows abruptly at the stomion or opening into the tomb chamber. The chamber is built of stone rather than simply being hewn out of the bedrock. Such tholoi were usually, though not invariably, set into slopes or hillsides. Burials were laid out on the floor of the tomb chamber, or were placed in pits, cists, or shafts cut into this floor.

The Egyptian Collection of the National Archaeological Museum in Athens keeps most of its riches well hidden in the Museum's storerooms. Among those, we have managed to rediscover some Late Period and Ptolemaic coffins with their mummies. All these particular anthropoid sarcophagi have been published in the Hellenic language in a rather elementary and concise way (with some erroneous points) more than a century ago by Tasos Neroutsos in Ἀρ-χαιολογικὴ ἐφημερὶς (Athens 1884). The author was a medical doctor who lived in Alexandria. Since then the coffins have fallen into oblivion, have never been exhibited in the Museum's showrooms (except one), and nobody else since the late Neroutsos cared to study them accurately. Now after so many years that have elapsed, a new generation of well qualified Egyptologists, with the Museum's collaboration, are trying to bring into light —once again— these forgotten and more or less unknown finds. These objects have been discovered in Egypt and were donated to the Hellenic Government during the late 19 th century by wealthy patriots who lived in Egypt. The purpose of this article is to remind both the Egyptologists and Egyptophili the presence of these forgotten mummies and to present a complete and precise study of some of these sarcophagi, dating from the Ptolemaic Period. Five out of these ten anthropoid coffins and their hieroglyphic inscriptions are thoroughly examined and presented in this paper.

In the course of time the ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic Writing was substantially trans for­ med, as is the case for every other scripture, due to various socio–cultural and linguistic reasons. Even tually new signs came into use or were devised, based on more ancient archetypes, whose very con ception was an outcome of the imme­ diate ambience of the Egyptians. Some of them fea ture a clear cosmovisional meaning and their symbo lism is related to either astro nomical or cos­ mo graphic notions. As each hieroglyph (phono­ grams, but mainly semo­ grams and taxo­ grams) was the carrier of some appropriate semantics, similar was also the ca se for these 'cos mo vi sio­ nal' hieroglyphs. In this article an attempt is made to study their evolution and signifi cance, starting from a certain group of signs (namely C199­C204, C296­C297 & C314) (cf. Gri­ mal et­ al., 1 1993: 1C­6; Grimal et­ al., 2 2000: 1C­4, 1C­5, 2C­8). The example of these hiero­ glyphs [especially of that depicting Nūt with a scarab (xprr), perso ni fication of the newly born morning Sun, and/or a divine baby/youth (Hwn nTry) between her and the earth, car rying also a certain solar sym bo lism (cf. BM 552, VIII, pl. xxvii)], are examined and their astro no mical and cosmo gra phic se mantics are studied. Although these were signs mainly used at a later period, they do incorporate several notions that date since many centuries earlier. Some remarks on their aesthe tic appearance and their sub se quent calli graphic function are also gi ven. We con clude that these signs, their form and their meaning being always deeply interlaced, present us with vivid paradigms of how im por tant astro no mi cal and cos mo vi sional no tions (that are also discussed here) can be com mu nicated through the vehicle of rebus and sym bolic writing, although in a pre– scientific level.