The celestial harmonies at Dendera
José María Barrera describes the beautifully restored ceiling of the pronaos of the Temple of Hathor at Dendera.
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Ancient Egypt February listings
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…
A Tawaret talisman for perilous pregnancy
Retired obstetrician W Benson Harer Jr explores the role of a special magic talisman in protecting pregnant women in ancient Egypt.
Win a copy of The Nubian Pharaohs of Egypt: Their Lives and Afterlives by Aidan Dodson
Do you recognise this place?
Rome versus the Egyptian priesthood
Sean P Rigby explores Roman influence on the post-pharaonic religious life of Egypt.
The great of dread in the foreign lands: Tiye, wife of Amenhotep III
Robert G Morkot tells us about the life and achievements of one of the most remarkable and influential characters of the New Kingdom.
Hilary Wilson on… Party Time
Just like us, ancient Egyptians enjoyed a good party with plenty of food and drink!
The modern resurrection of the Kushite kings of Egypt
Aidan Dodson explores how the history of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty has been pieced together over the past two centuries, emerging only recently from the racist views of early Egyptology scholars.
Ancient Egypt Letters 141
Your thoughts on issues raised by the magazine.
Athribis: The Temple of Ptolemy XII
Geoffrey Lenox-Smith explores the ruined Graeco-Roman temple at Athribis in Upper Egypt.
The false door of Neferiu
Dr Campbell Price describes an architectural portal between the realms of the living and the dead.
Descendants of a Lesser God: Provincial Power in Old and Middle Kingdom Egypt
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…
Famine and Feast in Ancient Egypt
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…
The Nubian Pharaohs of Egypt: Their lives and afterlives
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 decipherment of hieroglyphs: A momentous achievement in Egyptology
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…
Ancient Egypt news in brief
A round-up of some of the latest news from the world of ancient Egypt.…
Lost Nubian records
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…
Deprived sacred baboons
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…
Tiny coins reshape monetary history
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…
New finds at Saqqara
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…
Mummy with twins
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…
Gold tongues and Isis-Aphrodite
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…