Faking it: The new kingdom’s faux-stone funerary vessels
James Harrell looks at the time-honoured practice of imitating costly materials with cheaper ones.
Ancient Egypt
Relief of Nebhepetra Mentuhotep
Dr Campbell Price describes a stunning Eleventh Dynasty relief in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Ancient Egypt August listings
TOP OF THE PYRAMIDS: THE CIVILISATION OF ANCIENT EGYPT This exhibition, co-hosted by the Shanghai Museum and the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, has more than 780 ancient Egyptian artefacts on loan from Egyptian museums, most never before displayed in…
Abu Rowash
Aidan Dodson describes a forgotten royal necropolis of the early Old Kingdom.
Flinders Petrie and the discovery of early Egypt
Petrie’s work at Naqada revealed for the first time the prehistoric past of Egypt.
Graeco-Roman tombs
A joint Egyptian-Italian (University of Milan) archaeological mission at Aswan has discovered a further 33 tombs in the area near the Aga Khan Mausoleum. The new discoveries were made in a Graeco-Roman necropolis that is spread across ten levels on…
Nile shift brings wealth
New research published in Nature Geoscience suggests that a sudden major shift in the course of the Nile, 4,000 years ago, created a greatly enlarged area of fertile land. The team from Sweden’s Uppsala University and the University of Southampton…
Old Kingdom cancer treatment
A skull dating to the Old Kingdom bears evidence that might indicate an attempt to treat cancer, according to new research published by Tatiana Tondini, Albert Isidro, and Edgard Camarós in Frontiers in Medicine. Analysis of the skull, from the…
Sacrificial crocodile
A large crocodile mummy from the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery in the UK has revealed new insights into the popular crocodile cults of ancient Egypt. Used as votives to the Nile god Sobek, huge numbers of animals were killed…
New origin for an ancient game
The game of 58 Holes – also known as ‘Hounds and Jackals’ – is one of the oldest games in the world. It was long thought to have originated in Egypt, with the oldest example dating to the Eleventh Dynasty…
Sarcophagus of Ramesses II
A fragment of inscribed granite found at Abydos in 2009 belonged to the sarcophagus of Ramesses II, according to new research published in Revue d’Égyptologie. The piece was found beneath the floor of a Coptic monastery and identified (Damrani and…
Writing is harmful!
The text known as The Satire of the Trades extols the virtues of being a scribe compared to other jobs but, although not physically demanding, the positions and repetitive tasks involved could still take their toll on the body according…
Berenike discoveries
Fragments of four letters have been discovered at Berenike on the Red Sea coast. They were written on papyrus by Roman commanders stationed in Egypt in the reign of Nero (AD 54-68) and name three centurions: Haosus, Lucinius, and Petronius.…
Ancient Egypt news in brief
• An international team analysing the wall paintings in the tomb of Thutmose III has found an unusual combination of high-quality pigments and innovative colour blends reflecting possible Minoan influences. This suggests close cultural contacts between the Egyptian and Minoan…
A Study of the Sacred District Scene in Private Tomb Decoration (GHP EGYPTOLOGY 37)
REVIEW BY ROGER FORSHAW This Golden House Publication is a meticulous study of a distinct wall scene found in numerous private tombs, particularly during the New Kingdom. Kelly-Anne Diamond refers to it as ‘the Sacred District’, a map-like illustration depicting…
The Mammals of Ancient Egypt
REVIEW BY SG The Oxbow Classics in Egyptology series is steadily building into a large library of facsimile volumes covering a wide range of topics (including reissues of typological catalogues by W M Flinders Petrie, as reviewed in AE 139),…
Domestic Plants and Animals: The Egyptian Origins
REVIEW BY SG This second Oxbow Classics facsimile explores the history of domestication and the role of agriculture in the social economy, based on what was current evidence when it was first published in 1994, before presenting a comprehensive catalogue…
The Archaeology of Pharaonic Egypt: Society and Culture, 2700-1700 BC
REVIEW BY ANNA GARNETT For those undertaking formal or informal study of Egyptian archaeology, a number of key textbooks focusing on the social lives of the ancient Egyptian people will always be on the reading list – Barry Kemp’s seminal…
The Ptolemies: Apogee & Collapse – Ptolemaic Egypt 246-146 BC
REVIEW BY SARAH GRIFFITHS This is the second of the author’s planned trilogy on the last of Egypt’s dynasties (The Ptolemies: Rise of a Dynasty, the first of the series, was reviewed in AE 138). John D Grainger is a…
A Cylindrical Conundrum
Scholars have long puzzled over the function of the enigmatic golden objects discovered in the tombs of the Napatan kings and queens. Peter Lacovara believes he has solved the mystery.