Amarna

Ancient Egypt news in brief

• The gold bracelet of the Twenty-first Dynasty pharaoh Amenemope was recently stolen from the conservation laboratory of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Arrests were made but, sadly, the bracelet had already been melted down for gold. • An ancient…

Another Nefertiti

Two decades after the discovery of the famous Berlin bust, a chance discovery was made in 1933 of a sculptors’ workshop at Amarna containing another unfinished head of Akhenaten’s queen.

Left A gold ring found in the Northern Cemetery at Amarna bearing the hieroglyphs ‘Daughter of the Lady of the Two Lands’. above A necklace of hollow gold beads also found at Amarna.

Golden jewellery found in burial in Amarna

The Egyptian-British archaeological mission working in the Northern Cemetery (Tombs of the Nobles) at Amarna has uncovered a burial containing fine pieces of gold jewellery. The grave contained the remains of a young woman wrapped in textiles, who was buried…

Opposite page A hoopoe bird in an acacia tree, as depicted in the tomb of Khnumhotep II, painted by Howard Carter. LEFT A map of Middle Egypt showing the area to be covered by the EEF Archaeological Survey of Egypt between el Minya in the north and Mallawi in the south.

In Carter’s footsteps: a legacy in epigraphy

Tutankhamun and Howard Carter: two men whose lives are separated by more than three thousand years, but now and forever intertwined in the annals of history. The discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in November 1922 would seal the fate of both men and have long-lasting implications for the study and popularity of ancient Egypt. But Carter’s contribution to Egyptology goes much further than his leading role in the world’s most famous archaeological discovery, as Carl Graves reports.

Above The area of the tomb of Tutankhamun during the early part of the excavation of the tomb.

The First Resurrection of Tutankhamun

Continuing our 100th anniversary celebration of the finding of the tomb of Tutankhamun, Aidan Dodson looks at the ‘prehistory’ of the king, and how early scholars pieced together the evidence for this obscure king prior to the discovery of his tomb in 1922.

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Nefertiti

The wife of the ‘heretic’ king Akhenaten, Queen Nefertiti is today one of the most iconic of all ancient Egyptians, thanks to her painted bust revealed to the world in 1923. Aidan Dodson charts the career of this remarkable queen, a hard-headed pragmatist who became a forgotten – and possibly murdered – king.

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.