Egyptian Curses. Una ricerca interdisciplinare: i risultati

This volume Egyptian Curses 2 presents some results of the research programme Egyptian Curses, within the framework of the Project PRIN 2009 (Progetti di rilevante interesse nazionale/Research Projects of Relevant National Interest) "The Seven Plagues". A first glance on the project has been displayed in the volume Egyptian Curses 1. The CNR Team is a multidisciplinary group, composed by colleagues of the National Research Council of Italy (CNR) and by scholar from other prestigious institutions, who have contributed to this volume. During our work, we have felt the need to broaden our horizon involving some colleagues through meeting and seminars. Some of these contributions are published in this volume, regarding the Near Eastern environment and the debate on the historical accuracy of the Biblical sources about the Exodus stories. The programme has been developed, at first, gathering the data about the events from archaeological and written sources, and after discussing the data through interdisciplinary meetings and researches. The first section Egypt, includes four contributions, two on case-studies from literary sources and two from archaeological data. The second section relates Near East studies. A paper by G. Squillace presents a research on the Greek sources regarding the Egyptian medicine. At the end, a wide section concerns remote sensing, environment and survey technologies. The ancient Egypt, with its rich documentation, is a good observation point to understand the human response to cataclysms and to investigate destructive events in its mythopoetic perspective. On the other hand, data from ancient cataclysms can be useful for investigating current environmental problems. Crossing data from written and archaeological sources and analysing them in an interdisciplinary debate can effectively contribute to the knowledge of environmental disasters.