Lights, Camera, Action!
Continuing his series of articles entitled ‘Travels in an Antique Land’, independent traveller Karl Harris guides us round four Theban tombs recently opened to the public.
Africa
Current Research in Egyptology: Working Women
Jessica Coughtrey asks what ancient skeletons can tell us about the role of women in the ancient Egyptian workforce.
Current Research in Egyptology: Beyond ethnicity
Marwan Kilani reconsiders our ideas about collective identities in New Kingdom sources.
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.
Relief of Nebhepetra Mentuhotep
Dr Campbell Price describes a stunning Eleventh Dynasty relief in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
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.
Hilary Wilson on… Egypt and how to see it in 1912
What was it like to visit Egypt as a tourist just before the First World War?
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…
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…
Ancient Egypt Magazine 143
• A conundrum: what are these enigmatic golden cylinders from Nubia?
• Dating the dead: chronology and context at Saqqara’s Sacred Animal Necropolis
• Cooking recipes and drink preparation in ancient Egypt
• Current research in Egyptology: burial practices, Kamal and Erman, and black coffins
• Rediscovering Egypt: diving deeper into the Harrogate Collection in Swansea
• Lapis Lazuli: precious stone from Afghanistan
• The Temple of Hibis at Kharga Oasis
Creatures of the Nile: What animals did for ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt owed many debts to the creatures that lived in and beside the Nile. Both wild and domesticated animals offered an abundance of food, raw materials, and inspiration. But just as animals helped shape ancient Egypt, so too humans had an impact on the species roaming the Nile valley, as Gina Criscenzo-Laycock and Juliet Spedding told Matthew Symonds.
Autoarchaeology at Christiansborg Castle: Digging into ancestral connections to the transatlantic slave trade
The discovery of an unsuspected family link to Christiansborg Castle, Ghana, led to a project examining a forgotten aspect of the transatlantic slave trade. Rachel Ama Asaa Engmann introduces us to ‘autoarchaeology’.
A remarkable painted tomb
An ornately decorated mastaba has been discovered in the cemetery at Dahshur, the southernmost of the necropolises associated with Memphis, an ancient Egyptian capital. The tomb was discovered during recent excavations by the German Archaeological Institute (DAI), Cairo, which has…
Centurions’ correspondence
Archaeologists working in Berenike, Egypt, have discovered the remains of several letters written by Roman centurions. In the early centuries of the 1st millennium AD, the ancient port of Berenike, located on the west coast of the Red Sea, was…
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.
Current Research in Egyptology: Unveiling Ancient Egyptian Black Coffins
Marwa Abdel Razek and Mounira Raslan explore the role of Pauserhat, ‘scribe of the textile workshops’, and the significance of his black coffin.
Current Research in Egyptology: Kamal and Erman
Azza Ezzat and Ahmed Mansour highlight the achievements of two prestigious names in the history of Egyptology.
Current Research in Egyptology: Burial Practices in Alexandria
Samar Ahmed Abu-Dahab explores recent excavations at the Graeco-Roman Tanis Street cemetery site.
The Temple of Hibis at Kharga Oasis
Geoffrey Lenox-Smith goes off the beaten track to explore an unusual Late Period temple.
Dating the dead: Chronology and context at Saqqara’s sacred animal necropolis.
The Sacred Animal Necropolis at Saqqara consists of a series of catacombs and temples dating from different periods. Professor Paul Nicholson and Dr Henry Bishop-Wright of Cardiff University describe their project, which aims to get an overview of the site and determine how it developed over the centuries.
Rediscovering Egypt – Part 2: The Harrogate Collection in Swansea
Following his introduction to the Harrogate Collection in the last issue, Ken Griffin takes a closer look at some of the objects that are on loan to the Egypt Centre in Swansea.
Ancient Egypt June listings
CREATURES OF THE NILE Creatures of the Nile explores the world of ancient Egyptian and Sudanese animals through more than 250 artefacts from the University of Liverpool’s Garstang Museum, National Museums Liverpool, and Manchester Museum. Highlights include the earliest known…
Cooking Recipes and Drink Preparation in Ancient Egypt
Barbara Gai investigates the diet of ancient Egyptians and the ways in which their meals were prepared.
Hilary Wilson on… Lapis Lazuli
One of the most beautiful of all the semi-precious stones used by the ancient Egyptians was imported from quarries far away in Afghanistan.