Situated in the north-eastern part of the Nile Delta, ancient Djanet (Tanis) was the residence and burial place of the kings of the Twenty-first and Twenty-second Dynasties. In the late 1930s and early ’40s, a complex of royal tombs was…
Dr Campbell Price describes an unusual lamp stand from the collection of the Petrie Museum in London.
A round-up of some of the latest news from the world of ancient Egypt.…
A team at the Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo has just published the results of their research showing that a traditional condiment for Japanese sushi can be used to conserve papyri. Wasabi, extracted from the rhizome of a radish, has…
A collection of 600 ‘magical’ texts written in Coptic has been published following five years of study by researchers at the University of Würzburg. Papyri Copticae Magicae (published by de Gruyter) includes writings found on papyrus, parchment, paper, and ostraca.…
Following a public outcry over new ‘renovation’ work on the Pyramid of Menkaura at Giza, the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities has decided not to approve the continuation of the project. The original aims were to restore, document, and…
One of the world’s earliest cases of rheumatoid arthritis has been found in the skeletal remains of a Nubian woman from the Pan-Grave culture (c.1800 BC) by the Aswan–Kom Ombo Archaeological Project (AKAP). In a recently published paper, the joint…
A rare watercolour by Howard Carter is now on temporary display at the Egypt Centre, Swansea University. The scene from the Chapel of Thutmose I at Deir el-Bahri was painted when Carter was 19, and is his largest surviving work.…
An Old Kingdom mastaba tomb with painted decorations has been discovered by a team from the German Archaeological Institute working at Dahshur. Inscriptions name the deceased as Senebnebef, a palace official, and his wife Idut, a priestess of Hathor. The…
• Celestial Harmonies: astronomical cycles at the Temple of Dendera
• Queen Tiye: Great of Dread
• The modern resurrection of the Kushite kings of Egypt
• A Taweret talisman for perilous pregnancy
• Rome versus the Egyptian priesthood
• Athribis: the Temple of Ptolemy XII
José María Barrera describes the beautifully restored ceiling of the pronaos of the Temple of Hathor at Dendera.
SCULPTED PORTRAITS FROM ANCIENT EGYPT Sculpted Portraits explores revival and renewal during Egypt’s Twenty-sixth Dynasty, through a series of sculpted portraits of court officials and priests, created for display in tombs and temples. The artefacts at the exhibition are on…
Retired obstetrician W Benson Harer Jr explores the role of a special magic talisman in protecting pregnant women in ancient Egypt.
Do you recognise this place?
Sean P Rigby explores Roman influence on the post-pharaonic religious life of Egypt.
Robert G Morkot tells us about the life and achievements of one of the most remarkable and influential characters of the New Kingdom.
Just like us, ancient Egyptians enjoyed a good party with plenty of food and drink!
Your thoughts on issues raised by the magazine.
Geoffrey Lenox-Smith explores the ruined Graeco-Roman temple at Athribis in Upper Egypt.
Dr Campbell Price describes an architectural portal between the realms of the living and the dead.
REVIEW BY HILARY WILSON Histories of ancient Egypt have traditionally been written from a royal perspective, due largely to the availability of source material. This approach underestimates the role of the provinces, their administration and social structure, in the overall…
REVIEW BY ANNA GARNETT The Cambridge Elements: Ancient Egypt series delves into wider Egyptological themes and debates in fresh ways, beyond traditional approaches. Specialist authors collate primary source materials to illustrate complex themes in a way that readers can easily…
REVIEW BY SARAH GRIFFITHS Aidan Dodson’s Lives and Afterlives series continues with the often-neglected Twenty-fifth Dynasty: the Kushite kings who ruled Egypt for nearly a hundred years (c.755-656 BC). Nubia and Egypt were intimately linked throughout most of pharaonic history,…
The intricate symbols that adorn Egyptian monuments and papyri stood mute for millennia, their secrets locked away in a forgotten language. Hieroglyphs, with their captivating blend of pictorial and phonetic elements, had tantalised explorers and scholars for centuries, their enigmatic…
A round-up of some of the latest news from the world of ancient Egypt.…
Grafton Elliot Smith’s lost recording cards detailing his excavations near Aswan in 1907-1912 have been discovered in an archive at the University of Cambridge, and published as part of a ten-year research project by Dr Jenny Metcalfe of the University…
Baboons played an important role in ancient Egyptian ritual and were considered sacred, but their treatment when alive was poor according to new research from the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels. The team analysed the bones of…
A study of ‘insignificant’ tiny coins known as nummi minimi has led to a re-evaluation of monetary circulation in Egypt during late antiquity. Researchers from the Polish National Science Centre examined thousands of previously ignored Byzantine and Umayyad coins found…
A joint Egyptian-Japanese team working on the eastern escarpment of the North Saqqara plateau has discovered a rock-cut tomb dating to the Second Dynasty. The tomb contained an adult buried in a crouched position, found lying next to the remains…
CT-scans of a female mummy from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History have revealed the teenaged girl was pregnant with twins, and she may have died in childbirth. One foetus had been wrapped and placed between the mother’s legs…
The Spanish mission that is excavating a series of rock-cut tombs at the ancient site of Oxyrhynchus (el-Bahnasa, Minya) has discovered two more mummies with gold tongues, and several terracotta figures of Isis-Aphrodite – the first to be found in…
• Akhenaten: the battle for Egyptian identity
• Surgery in ancient Egypt
• Pyramid Man: Charles Piazzi Smyth
• Cleopatra III: the female king
• Carter’s rare linen ‘bag-tunic’
• The sidelock of youth: the significance of a curious hairstyle
• A journey through Sudan: the royal road to Meroë
Sacred baboons Baboons were long venerated in ancient Egypt and their mummies have been found in several cemeteries. A new study published in PLOS ONE () has analysed a collection of 36 such mummies from the site of Gabbanat el-Qurud,…
Rachel Cotton investigates an extremely rare item: a linen ‘bag-tunic’ discovered by Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon in 1909.
Do you recognise this place?
Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones continues his series on the later Ptolemaic queens
with the ambitious Cleopatra III and her murderous family rivalries.