Monitoring the Environmental Risks Around Medinet Habu and Ramesseum Temple at West Luxor,Egypt, Using Remote Sensing and GIS Techniques

Today, the preservation of cultural heritage is a pressing issue especially for territories subjected to a long period of human action that could adversely influence environment and heritage properties, thus producing a deterioration of archaeological features and alteration of historical landscape. In this paper, the environmental risks and their effects on preservation issues are investigated for the archaeological area of the Luxor city (south of Egypt) where the most famous Temples in Egypt are located. A comprehensive analysis has been conducted for the Ramesseum and Medinet Habu temples considering their building material and characteristics, environmental (geological and hydrological) setting, and past and ongoing changes around the monument areas. Satellite multitemporal images have been used to detect all the changes mainly linked to the expansion of urban and agriculture areas. Results from the analysis conducted along with in situ investigations have suggested that many of the environmental problems around the archaeological areas are coming as a result of urban and agriculture sprawling. Both of them strongly influence the distribution in the levels of groundwater which along with temperature are considered as the main causes of the deterioration process affecting the Medinet Habu and Ramesseum temple. The degree of weathering damage appears to be much more dependent on exposure characteristics of the investigation areas, especially as related to salt weathering processes. Innovative solutions to support the preservation of these temples are herein presented and discussed.     

Palaeolithic and Neolithic Occupations in the Témara Region (Rabat, Morocco): Recent Data on Hominin Contexts and Behavior

In the 1970s, the discoveries of Palaeolithic human remains in the caves of Dar es Soltane 2, El Harhoura 1 and Les Contrebandiers reinforced interest in the sites of the Témara region. These sites, often cited, have been the object of numerous investigations which have produced a major contribution to the prehistory of Morocco. Over the past 15 years, research at two key sites, El Mnasra and El Harhoura 2, have considerably enhanced the available data for this region. Preliminary results obtained from excavations since 2001, allow us to present the palaeoenvironmental framework and describe the technological behaviour of prehistoric groups within a re-evaluated stratigraphic context. The microfaunal and macrofaunal assemblages are analysed according to systematics, taphonomy and palaeoecology. The lithic and bone industries document patterns of raw material acquisition and transformation. Within the context of the history of more than 60 years of research in the region of Témara, this contribution allows us to approach the question of Palaeolithic population on the basis of recent, and for the most part new, data and evidence.     

Kinship terms in the Nabataean inscriptions

This paper examines one of the most important aspects of Nabataean social structure, namely kinship terminology. It examines the linguistic derivations, meanings and social significance of kinship terms, and compares them with those found in other Semitic languages.