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Below The ‘Ramesses Ra of Rulers’ colossus at Luxor Temple.

A family of god-kings: divine kingship in the early Nineteenth Dynasty

Peter J Brand begins a new series focusing on the Ramesside Period by exploring the divinity of the early Ramesside kings.

Exploring the Great Pyramid void

The international ScanPyramids team has published a paper revealing more details about one of the voids discovered in the Pyramid of Khufu in 2016/2017 (see ‘News’, AE 93). Several large anomalies were discovered after the pyramid was bombarded with radiographic…

Below The Twelfth Dynasty wooden coffin of Ukhhotep from Meir, now in the MMA. inset Ukhhotep asks for the basic offerings of bread, beer, ox, fowl, alabaster, and linen, all by the thousand, to be made available for him in the ‘Field of Reeds’, the Egyptian paradise.

Tomb offerings: a wish list for eternity

Ancient Egyptians believed that the foods and goods listed in their tombs would magically become available to them for eternity. Hilary Wilson reports.

Alexandria Antiqua: A topographical Catalogue and Reconstruction

Review by Sarah Griffiths The city of Alexandria, founded by Alexander the Great (c.331 BC), was strategically situated on the Mediterranean coast at the junction of three continents, protected by reefs, headlands, and the Pharos Island to the north, and…

Win a copy of ‘The Story of Tutankhamun’

Do you recognise where in Egypt this photograph was taken?

Ancient Egypt Magazine 136 Letters

Your thoughts on issues raised by the magazine, plus what’s coming up in future issues. Email the Editor: peter@ancientegyptmagazine.com with your comments.

Above A newly restored scene in the south hall of the Chapel of Amun Ra in the Hatshepsut Temple at Deir el Bahri. left Restoration work being completed on the Eleventh Dynasty tomb belonging to Meru, which is now open to the public.

Ancient Egyptian news in brief: crocodile burials and a counterfeit tomb

A round-up of some of the latest news from the ancient Egyptian world.

Ancient Egyptian Statues: Their Many Lives and Deaths

Review by Campbell Price This finely produced book from AUC Press is written with eloquence by statue scholar and curator Simon Connor. Opening with recent debates about the role and identity of ‘public’ statues, the book sets out to investigate…

Top The remains of the newly discovered Roman town, shown with Luxor Temple in the background. above Finds from the Roman city include coins, water bottles, and a stone mortar and pestle.

Roman residential town found close to Luxor Temple

The complex dates to the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD.

Left ‘Overseer of the Fields’ Horemkhauef (on the left), in front of a row of granaries, in a scene from his tomb at Hierakonpolis.

Horemkhauef of Hierakonpolis

In the first of an occasional series focusing on remarkable people of their period, Wolfram Grajetzki introduces the ‘First Inspector of the Priests’ at Nekhen during the Second Intermediate Period.

Opposite The god Min with the female pharaoh Hatshepsut, in a scene from the Red Chapel at Karnak. right A Late Period copper alloy statuette of the god Amun Min, depicted holding his phallus in his left hand, with his right hand held aloft. From the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. far right The god Amun Min depicted with black coloured skin, in a scene originally from the Thutmose III temple in Deir el Bahari, and now in the Luxor Museum.

Min: the most popular deity in the Eastern Desert?

Sean Rigby traces the worship of this distinctive-looking ancient Egyptian god.

The Archaeology of Egyptian Non-Royal Burial Customs in New Kingdom Egypt and Its Empire

Review by Anna Garnett Traditional Egyptological narratives often placed Egypt at the centre, to the detriment of neighbouring cultures, with the result that our understanding of the complexities of those cultures can be partial and biased. It is always refreshing…

Below left The Roman Period sphinx discovered near Dendera. below A stone stela discovered with the sphinx.

‘Smiling’ sphinx statue discovered near Dendera

The face of the sphinx could possibly represent the Roman emperor Claudius

ABOVE The Deir el Bahri temples from above, with the remains of Mentuhotep’s structure in the foreground to the left of the Temple of Hatshepsut.

The Temple of Mentuhotep II at Deir el-Bahri

Geoffrey Lenox-Smith explores the innovative Middle Kingdom monument that inspired Hatshepsut’s famous Deir el-Bahri temple.

Above The large collection of pottery vessels discovered in a mummification workshop at Saqqara in 2018. Recent research shows that the ingredients inside came from across the world.

Analysis shines light on ingredients of mummification

Some of the ingredients, such as elemi and dammar resins, are thought to have been imported from the tropical forests of south-east Asia

The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia

Review by Anna Garnett The past two decades have seen greater recognition that the cultures of Nubia represent the earliest complex societies in inner Africa in their own right: scholars of ancient Nile cultures now more frequently seek to look…

The Tomb of Tutankhamun: The Other Side of the Story

Review by Hilary Forrest Oh no – not another book about Tutankhamun! This one, however, is rather different. The first sections of the book cover the history of the Valley of the Kings, the early desecrations of the tombs, and…

Left A Roman Period tomb at the ancient site of Oxyrhynchus, containing a sarcophagus without its lid. below Coptic period tombs at Oxyrhynchus.

Roman, Coptic, and Byzantine tombs discovered in Minya

Other tasks carried out by the team this season included conservation work on the murals of the basilica on site

Above An accurate replica of one of the chariots found in Tutankhamun’s tomb, on display in the touring exhibition Tutankhamun: His Tomb and His Treasures.

Pharaoh’s chariot wheel: the power behind the throne

Kim Masters traces the development of the chariot wheel from its humble origin as a tree log under a stone block.

Right Dr Margaret Murray and team members unwrapping and performing an autopsy on the mummy of Khnum Nakht at the University of Manchester in 1908.

Margaret Murray’s Pioneering Investigation in 1908

A scientific approach to the study of ancient Egyptian mummies.

Above A view of Qurna, with clusters of private tombs cut into the upper slopes.

Exploring tomb distribution in Upper Qurna

Katherine Slinger searches for patterns in the locations of private tombs on the slopes above the royal mortuary temples of Luxor.

Terracotta female figurine from el Ma’mariya

In this issue, Dr Campbell Price describes an intriguing Predynastic artefact in the Brooklyn Museum.

Tomb Families: Private Tomb Distribution in the New Kingdom Theban Necropolis

Review by Campbell Price This book is the result of the very recent PhD research of Liverpool University student Katherine Slinger – so recent, in fact, that Dr Slinger graduated after the book was published, which must be some sort…

Left Restoration work being carried out on the Book of the Dead of Ahmose. below A scene from Ahmose’s Book of the Dead, showing the ‘weighing of the heart’ with the monster god Amit in attendance.

Unrolling a Book of the Dead scroll

Measuring more than 16 metres long, the papyrus was discovered in May 2022 at Saqqara

Ancient Egypt April listings

PHARAOH: KING OF EGYPT An international touring exhibition of more than 120 objects from the British Museum, exploring the ideals, symbolism, and ideology of Egyptian kingship, and the realities of life in ancient Egypt. The exhibition is organised by the…