Egyptology: obelisks and ambitions
Flinders Petrie is called the father of Egyptian archaeology; well, he was assisted on all of his excavations by his wife Hilda, who has never really achieved the due recognition that she deserves.
Egypt
Ship-shape finds from a sunken city
The newly discovered Ptolemaic galley was found under 5m of dense Nile clay and building remains.
An expectant mummy
Tests indicate that the woman was between 20 and 30 years old and was 26-28 weeks pregnant at the time of death.
War on Film: The Desert Rats (1953)
The battle scenes are, in the main, well made, especially in showing what it was like for men hiding in dugouts and wadis in the desert under intense artillery-fire.
World News: Luxor, Napoleon, and Neanderthals
A round-up of some of the latest stories in Archaeology around the world, including a previously unknown city uncovered in Luxor, a tree from the Battle of Waterloo, and research into how Neanderthals spoke and heard.
On show: exhibitions from around the world – June 2021
Many museums and galleries around the world have recently reopened with safety measures in place, including compulsory booking and limits on visitor numbers. Closures are still a possibility, and the dates listed below may have changed since we went to print. Check the websites and social-media accounts of the institutions for the most up-to-date information, bookings, and, in many cases, a chance to explore their collections online.
Lost city in Luxor
The city is situated near to Amenhotep III’s royal palaces and may have provided food and other items to the royal residence, as well as acting as the administrative and industrial centre of the empire.
Ancient Egyptian animal cemetery
Excavations at an animal burial ground in the Egyptian port of Berenice have uncovered evidence of cats, dogs, and monkeys being kept as pets.
World News: Egypt, China, Eurasia
News touching on CT scans of the mummified remains of Pharaoh Seqenenre-Taa-II (c.1558-1553 BC), a mistake uncovered on 800-year-old wall paintings in a cave in China, and a new theory concerning the domestication of dogs by early humans in Eurasia.
More than a hundred ancient tombs discovered in Egypt
68 of the 110 tombs date back to the Predynastic civilisation in Lower Egypt, which lasted from c. 6000-3300 BC.
Rosetta Stone: paper, paste, and prepositions
The Rosetta Stone was the key to unlocking the secrets of Egyptian hieroglyphs. The results of Jean-François Champollion’s work on the Stone’s inscription may be well known, but other scholars – with different attitudes towards ancient Egypt – also took up the challenge. Jed Buchwald and Diane Greco Josefowicz examine what forgotten manuscripts can tell us about the decipherment of the ancient scripts. examines what forgotten manuscripts can tell us about the decipherment of the ancient scripts.
The lost city of al-Qata’i‘
Just decades after it was founded, ibn Tulun’s capital al-Qata’i‘ was razed to the ground. The Great Mosque of ibn Tulun, the oldest mosque in Africa to survive in its original form, still stands in Cairo today, and through its magnificent architecture offers a chance to encounter the former glory of al-Qata’i‘. Nigel Fletcher-Jones is our guide to this lost city.
Virtual visit to Wahtye’s tomb
A digital 3D model offers a new way to visit this remarkable ancient Egyptian site.
Object Lesson: Lost Dixon Relic
This cigar box, containing several wooden splinters that make up a piece of cedar discovered in the Great Pyramid of Giza, was recently found in the University of Aberdeen’s collections.
CT scans reveal a pharaoh’s violent death
Detailed study of the injuries to Seqenenre’s head has indicated that they were caused by several different weapons, suggesting that he was killed by multiple attackers
A pyramid puzzle
A missing piece of wood, one of the three objects collected from the Great Pyramid of Giza by engineer Waynman Dixon in 1872, has been rediscovered in a cigar box in the University of Aberdeen’s museum collection. Two of the…
Great Pyramid artefact found in Aberdeen
In December 2019, a small fragment of cedar, which had been missing for more than 70 years, was rediscovered within the collections of the University of Aberdeen. The fragment may, at first glance, seem unprepossessing, except for the fact that…
Minerva Magazine 187
• Queens of the Nile: royal wives & goddesses
• Transformation at the heart of the Inca empire
• Herculaneum: a grand Roman house trapped in time
• Face to face with the Greek dead
• Legacy of the Etruscans in Campania
Amelia Edwards
This major figure in Egyptian archaeology was also a novelist, journalist, artist, erstwhile musician, and dauntless travel writer.
More mummies unveiled at Saqqara
As well as the coffins, which date to the Late Period (525-332 BC) and Ptolemaic Dynasty (323-30 BC), Egyptian archaeologists found shabtis, amulets, four gilded funerary masks, and 40 statues of Ptah Sokar, a prominent god of Saqqara.
A study in purple
Today, more than 1,000 of these mummy portraits survive in museums and collections around the world.
Deir el-Bahri, 1894
The exquisite results can be seen in Paget’s watercolour of bulls from one wall, and Howards Carter’s reproduction of a scene in which Thutmosis I and his mother Seniseneb make offerings to the god Anubis.
Statue of Ramesses VI
What is it? This granite statue depicts Pharaoh Ramesses VI, who reigned 1144-1137 BC. On the back is a hieroglyphic inscription that reads: ‘May [he] live, [the] good god, son of [the god] Amun, the protector, bull of Thebes, king…
The horizon of Khufu: inside the Great Pyramid
The sheer scale of Khufu’s Great Pyramid is breathtaking, but there is more to this audacious monument than immediately meets the eye, as Matthew Symonds recalls.
Nefertari: into the Valley of the Queens
The Great Royal Wife of Ramesses II, Nefertari, was buried in one of the most spectacular tombs of Egypt’s Valley of the Queens. Well-educated and well-travelled, Nefertari played a crucial part in the political life of the pharaoh, and her importance was reflected through her magnificently decorated tomb. Minerva's Lucia Marchini speaks to Jennifer Casler Price to find out more.
Parsing the properties of Egyptian purple pigments
Between 30 BC and the 3rd century AD, during which period Egypt was a province of the Roman Empire, a practice developed of attaching a portrait of a mummified individual to their mummy wrappings. Approximately 1,100 of these paintings have…
AI and ancient languages
Available in English and Arabic, Fabricius is an enjoyable introduction to hieroglyphs, but also presents new approaches for professional Egyptologists.
New discoveries at Saqqara
As well as the coffins, archaeologists also unearthed 28 statues of Ptah Sokar, the main god of the Saqqara necropolis...
Ramesses II Ka statue found in Giza
Measuring 105cm high, this is the first granite Ka statue to be discovered.
New discoveries from the lost cities of the Nile delta
Underwater archaeologists have taken to the waters of Egypt’s Aboukir Bay once more, revealing remarkable new finds from a temple at Thonis-Heracleion. Franck Goddio told Lucia Marchini about the latest results from this year’s excavation at the sunken city.
Tutankhamun: a teenager’s journey to the afterlife
As the centenary of Howard Carter’s discovery looms, the largest collection of Tutankhamun’s grave goods ever to leave Egypt has embarked on a world tour. The objects, ranging from glittering treasures to everyday essentials, were assembled to ease the youthful pharaoh’s passage into the next world. For all their beauty, these artefacts also tell tales of belief, the burden of royal duties, and young love, as Tarek El Awady revealed to CWA's Matthew Symonds.
Ship 17: a wreck in the Nile
The emporium of Thonis-Heracleion lay at the westernmost entrance to the Nile. When this city sank into the Mediterranean, it created an extraordinary underwater repository of ancient activity, complete with ports and canals crammed with traces of ancient craft. Alexander Belov told Matthew Symonds what the first ship from the city to be excavated reveals about rivercraft that once caught Herodotus’ eye.
When women ruled the world: an interview with Egyptologist Kara Cooney
Egyptologist Kara Cooney talks to Richard Marranca about her research into Ancient Egyptian queens and into funerary practice
Nefertiti: recreating an icon
The painted limestone bust of the Egyptian Queen Nefertiti, recovered from the royal city of Amarna, is familiar across the world. This bust has inspired many copies – some very accurate, some far less so – so that many of us first ‘meet’ Nefertiti via one of these replicas. Recently, in an effort to understand the processes behind the creation of the original Nefertiti, Joyce Tyldesley commissioned her own replica.
Scanning the Pharaohs
The results of CT imaging on Hatshepsut, Ramesses III, Tutankhamen, and a host of other New Kingdom mummies are revealed in a gripping new book by Zahi Hawass and Sahar Saleem, as Kimberley Watt illuminates.
Ancient Egyptian police and punishment
Stab wounds found on Ancient Egyptian skeletons suggest corporal punishment was used at the New Kingdom site of Amarna.