The mummy of a woman with a screaming facial expression (below) has attracted a great deal of press attention recently, with headlines suggesting she died in agony. However, in spite of a recent examination using advanced scanning techniques, the cause…
Another news item that has had widespread coverage is the claim that the Step Pyramid of Djoser was built using a hydraulic lift. Research by a privately owned French institute specialising in hydrology, archaeology, and geotechnics suggests that the ancient…
Two Roman Period rock-cut catacombs have been discovered by an Egyptian mission excavating at the site of Zawyet Umm el-Rakham, west of Marsa Matruh (about 300 km west of Alexandria). The tombs are approached through a stairway leading to a…
A French-Egyptian team has begun documenting rock carvings and inscriptions south of Aswan that were submerged when the area was flooded to create the Aswan High Dam in the 1970s. Working in the area between the dam and the reservoir,…
A structure, dating to the 6th century BC, discovered three years ago by an Egyptian mission at the Temple of Buto (in modern-day Tell el-Faraeen) is now thought to be Egypt’s first and largest astronomical observatory, where priests could monitor…
Meilin Lyu explores the different aspects of the ancient Egyptian cat, its depictions in art, and its importance in religion, cults, and daily life.
Where was this photograph taken? If you know, email the Editor (peter@ancientegyptmagazine.com) before 31 October with your answer, giving your full name, address, and contact number. One lucky reader will have their name selected at random from all the correct…
Your thoughts on issues raised by the magazine.
Bob Brier gives a fascinating account of the ultimately unsuccessful attempts to save a fresco found at Akhenaten’s city of Amarna.
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.
Jessica Coughtrey asks what ancient skeletons can tell us about the role of women in the ancient Egyptian workforce.
Marwan Kilani reconsiders our ideas about collective identities in New Kingdom sources.
James Harrell looks at the time-honoured practice of imitating costly materials with cheaper ones.
Dr Campbell Price describes a stunning Eleventh Dynasty relief in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
TOP OF THE PYRAMIDS: THE CIVILISATION OF ANCIENT EGYPT This exhibition, co-hosted by the Shanghai Museum and the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, has more than 780 ancient Egyptian artefacts on loan from Egyptian museums, most never before displayed in…
Aidan Dodson describes a forgotten royal necropolis of the early Old Kingdom.
Petrie’s work at Naqada revealed for the first time the prehistoric past of Egypt.
What was it like to visit Egypt as a tourist just before the First World War?
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…
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…
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…
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…
The game of 58 Holes – also known as ‘Hounds and Jackals’ – is one of the oldest games in the world. It was long thought to have originated in Egypt, with the oldest example dating to the Eleventh Dynasty…
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…
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…
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.…
• 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…
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…
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),…
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…
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…
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 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.
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.
Marwa Abdel Razek and Mounira Raslan explore the role of Pauserhat, ‘scribe of the textile workshops’, and the significance of his black coffin.
Azza Ezzat and Ahmed Mansour highlight the achievements of two prestigious names in the history of Egyptology.