La provincia dell’Arpione Occidentale nei testi egiziani: ricerche storiche, geografiche e religiose dalle origini all’Epoca Romana

<i>La provincia dell’Arpione Occidentale nei testi egiziani: ricerche storiche, geografiche e religiose dalle origini all’Epoca Romana</i> presents research on the Western Harpoon province – the seventh nome of Lower Egypt – located in the north-western Delta and a strategic region for the Egyptian economy, joining the Mediterranean, the caravan routes in the Libyan Desert and the heart of Egyptian political power exercised along the Nile valley. However, this region has not been the subject of comprehensive studies or in-depth archaeological investigations. Our archaeological knowledge of the province is greatly lacking, with the exception of the regions of Canopus and Alexandria. The scarcity of archaeological sources is contrasted by an abundance of textual documentation, mainly from priestly literature, which provides us with a kind of ‘map’ of human thought and belief that follows a topographical arrangement and allows us to define the lost archaeological landscape. This book is the first monograph devoted to a comprehensive study of the province of the Western Harpoon and aims to reconstruct its history and religious geography through textual sources, from its origins to the end of the Roman era. From this research, a more organic and structured picture has been gained of the sacred topography and cults of the Western Harpoon province within its historical landscape.