Abstract
The Ancient Egyptian toponym Pr-šs, ‘Alabaster House’, is argued to be the ancestor of the modern place name al-Barshā. It may have designated a recently discovered industrial site at the mouth of the Wādī Zabayda, close to the al-Shaykh Sa‘īd tombs, where calcite alabaster was worked. This lies about 2 km south of modern al-Barshā. However, the presence of another calcite alabaster quarry even nearer to al-Barshā itself suggests Pr-šs may rather have been the original designation of this village.
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