This autumn marked 200 years since the ‘hieroglyphic code’ was cracked, allowing scholars to read and understand the ancient Egyptian script for the first time in centuries, and revolutionising our understanding of the people who used it. Carly Hilts visited two London-based exhibitions reflecting this milestone.
The discovery dates to the Late Roman Period when the city was occupied by a nomadic people known as the Blemmyes,
Rosalie David and Roger Forshaw present a new perspective on healthcare in ancient Egypt.
An Egyptian team has discovered a cache containing a number of coins from different historical eras
The beautiful and mysterious signs adorning ancient monuments across Egypt have excited speculation for centuries. The tale of how their meaning was finally rediscovered is just as long, and takes in many twists and turns. Success came 200 years ago, and with it a staggering insight into ancient Egyptian history, as Ilona Regulski told Matthew Symonds.
The remarkable discoveries of headless falcon skeletons and a stele depicting an Egyptian falcon deity have led researchers to dub the temple the 'Falcon Shrine'.
Conservators working in the Temple of Khnum in Esna, Upper Egypt, have uncovered new details of the building’s colourful ceiling frescoes. Construction on the temple began in the Ptolemaic period and continued into the Roman period, with decoration completed during…
Review by Barbara E Borg ‘The real essence of an age is better revealed among trivial and commonplace things than among prominent monuments and great leaders.’ The opening sentence of this book captures succinctly its underlying principles. Following two chapters…
At Home in Roman Egypt offers the first full-scale investigation of life as experienced by the ordinary people of Roman Egypt in the 1st to 4th centuries AD. It approaches the subject by looking at the life course, following people’s…
Southern Ethiopia’s Gedeo Zone is home to many megalithic stelae that reach up to 6m in height, with an estimate of more than 10,000 across some 60 sites. Some resemble phalluses, others have faces or anthropomorphic designs, while some are…
CA explores the latest archaeological news from across the globe, including the discovery of the world's oldest Christian monastery.
Archaeologists in Israel have uncovered the largest complex of Byzantine winepresses ever found. The industrial estate, where around 2 million litres of wine were produced every year, was recently unearthed in the city of Yavne and dated to c.1,500 years ago.
Inscriptions were also found on the walls of several buildings, with passages from biblical and early Christian texts written in Greek.
The Rosetta Stone that proved key to the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs, discovered by a French military engineer in 1799 (now in the British Museum), and the gold mask of Tutankhamun, discovered by British Egyptologist Howard Carter in 1922 (now…
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.
Excavations at an animal burial ground in the Egyptian port of Berenice have uncovered evidence of cats, dogs, and monkeys being kept as pets.
This major figure in Egyptian archaeology was also a novelist, journalist, artist, erstwhile musician, and dauntless travel writer.
Today, more than 1,000 of these mummy portraits survive in museums and collections around the world.
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…
Available in English and Arabic, Fabricius is an enjoyable introduction to hieroglyphs, but also presents new approaches for professional Egyptologists.