Ricerc@Sapienza

Egypt is already the most populous Arab country in the world with 93 million citizens in 2016 which may grow to about 120 million by 2030 if the same level of fertility continues. This paper aims to offer an overview of the evolution over time of the ideal number of children in Egypt, assessing previous researches and giving a particular emphasis on most recent data on such topic. In a context of raising fertility, whose causes are still unknown, we test the persistence of a high ideal number of children among younger cohorts.

The exploration of the “Palace of the Copper Axes”, the Early Bronze Age III palace of the easternmost city of Southern Levant during the 3rd millennium BC, was resumed in 2018, during the 14th season of excavation at Khirbet al-Batrawy in north-central Jordan, and completed in 2019.

A visit to ruins often raised and still raises the emotion of silence and, therefore, the idea that ancient spaces implicate the possibility of reflection and abstraction from the noise of reality and contemporaneity. The present contribution specifically focuses on the silent descriptions of ancient ruins and the related emotions which travellers experience, pointing to the difference of descriptions of ancient places and cities – before they became ruins – made by the people living therein.

This paper deals with a crucial problem in the study of Greek literature in late antique Egypt, namely the relationship between paganism and Christianity. After a quick assessment of the shift in recent scholarship from the notion of conflict to those of dialogue and interaction, I tackle some key issues, such as the ambiguity of the literary language in revealing religious beliefs, the audience response and the various functions of classical paideia.

The Tell es-Sultan, ancient Jericho, is amongst the earliest “cities” that rose in the Southern Levant between the end of 4th and the beginning of the 3rd millennium BCE. The site is being excavated, studied and rehabilitated for tourism by Sapienza University of Rome and the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities since 1997. In 2017, during the 13th season of excavation, an unexpected discovery occurred: five Chambardia rubens shells have been found piled up in a dwelling unit dating back to the Early Bronze Age IB-II.

Gabriella Scandone Matthiae recognized and first published one of the most outstanding finds from Middle Bronze Ebla, the club of Pharaoh Hotepibra Harnedjheryotef, retrieved in the “Tomb of the Lord of the Goats”, an Eblaite king called Immeya. Though Hotepibra belongs to a group of rather obscure rulers of the 13th Dynasty, according to Manfred Bietak he reigned in Tell el-Dab‘a/ancient Avaris, bearing the title of “son of the Asiatic”, an epithet which may reflect special relationships established between Egypt and Syria-Palestine during the Second Intermediate Period.

The comparison of two sites of Tell es-Sultan and Tall al-Ḥammām, facing each other on the
opposite sides of the Jordan, needs a reliable cultural and chronological correlation. Something which
has been pursued by archaeologists with different methods and approaches: synchronization in time
and culture is never easy. This leads to the issue of relative and absolute chronology. A recent reassessment
of Early Bronze Age absolute chronology of Syria-Palestine, stemmed from a reexamination