Reasons for retesting the Tutankhamun family DNA
Joseph L. Thimes reassesses the 2010 genetic testing of the royal mummies and proposes a new set of tests to build a more accurate Amarna family tree.
Ancient Egypt
UK events, exhibitions, and heritage from home 2022-2023
As we head into spring, there are many fantastic opportunities to get out and about and enjoy the UK’s history, archaeology, and cultural heritage, whether you’re looking for historical re-enactments, excavation opportunities, or new exhibitions. If you prefer, there are also plenty of resources available online, ranging from digital museum collections and 3D tours of heritage sites to activities and archaeological TV shows for the whole family. Amy Brunskill has put together a selection of some of the options available.
Religious Practice and Cultural Construction of Animal Worship in Egypt from the Early Dynastic to the New Kingdom: ritual forms, material display, historical development
Review by Salima Ikram. This book, based on a PhD thesis, focuses on Egyptian ‘animal worship’ from the 3rd to the 2nd millennium BC. In the introduction, the author states that the work aims to use multiple theoretical perspectives and…
At Home in Roman Egypt: A Social Archaeology
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…
Museum news – January 2022
The latest on acquisitions, exhibitions, and key decisions.
Luxor temple: where kings become gods
After coronation, the new pharaoh would head to the temple at Luxor to assume the royal ka that flowed from the gods Horus and Re all the way down Egypt’s line of rulers. Nigel Fletcher-Jones takes us on a procession through this all-important site, developed by kings strengthening their claims to divine ka.
Pharaoh Djoser’s tomb reopens after restoration
A tomb belonging to King Djoser, an ancient Egyptian pharaoh who lived in the Third Dynasty, over 4,500 years ago, has recently reopened to the public after extensive restoration work.
Great Sites of the Ancient World
This gloriously illustrated volume takes readers on a tour of 100 archaeological sites around the world. While many of the selections are familiar entries in lists of great sites – such as the Giza plateau, Machu Picchu, and Hadrian’s Wall…
The Warsaw Mummy Project
A multidisciplinary project that uses a wide range of techniques to study ancient Egyptian mummies is shedding new light on the secrets hidden beneath their wrappings, as Marzena Oz.arek-Szilke, Marcin Jaworski, Wojciech Ejsmond, and Stanisl´aw Szilke explain.
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.
A History of World Egyptology
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…
Lost city in Luxor
The city is situated near to Amenhotep III’s royal palaces and may have provided food and other items to the royal residence, as well as acting as the administrative and industrial centre of the empire.
Discoveries in the desert
Since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the 1940s, the caves - which have preserved fragile objects like the scrolls – have been the target of looters.
Great Pyramid artefact found in Aberdeen
In December 2019, a small fragment of cedar, which had been missing for more than 70 years, was rediscovered within the collections of the University of Aberdeen. The fragment may, at first glance, seem unprepossessing, except for the fact that…
More mummies unveiled at Saqqara
As well as the coffins, which date to the Late Period (525-332 BC) and Ptolemaic Dynasty (323-30 BC), Egyptian archaeologists found shabtis, amulets, four gilded funerary masks, and 40 statues of Ptah Sokar, a prominent god of Saqqara.
Deir el-Bahri, 1894
The exquisite results can be seen in Paget’s watercolour of bulls from one wall, and Howards Carter’s reproduction of a scene in which Thutmosis I and his mother Seniseneb make offerings to the god Anubis.
Statue of Ramesses VI
What is it? This granite statue depicts Pharaoh Ramesses VI, who reigned 1144-1137 BC. On the back is a hieroglyphic inscription that reads: ‘May [he] live, [the] good god, son of [the god] Amun, the protector, bull of Thebes, king…
The horizon of Khufu: inside the Great Pyramid
The sheer scale of Khufu’s Great Pyramid is breathtaking, but there is more to this audacious monument than immediately meets the eye, as Matthew Symonds recalls.
Parsing the properties of Egyptian purple pigments
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…
Painting Antiquity: visions of Egypt
Three Victorian artists – Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Edward Poynter, and Edwin Long – helped to shape our image of the distant past. Stephanie Moser describes how their passion for archaeology and love of domestic objects produced a wealth of detailed, descriptive paintings.
News in brief
British Museum launches protective platform The British Museum has launched a global platform called ‘Circulating Artefacts’ (CircArt) to fight against the looting and trafficking of antiquities. This initiative combines a restricted object database with an online public service where users…
Ramesses II Ka statue found in Giza
Measuring 105cm high, this is the first granite Ka statue to be discovered.
Ship 17: a wreck in the Nile
The emporium of Thonis-Heracleion lay at the westernmost entrance to the Nile. When this city sank into the Mediterranean, it created an extraordinary underwater repository of ancient activity, complete with ports and canals crammed with traces of ancient craft. Alexander Belov told Matthew Symonds what the first ship from the city to be excavated reveals about rivercraft that once caught Herodotus’ eye.
When women ruled the world: an interview with Egyptologist Kara Cooney
Egyptologist Kara Cooney talks to Richard Marranca about her research into Ancient Egyptian queens and into funerary practice
Scanning the Pharaohs
The results of CT imaging on Hatshepsut, Ramesses III, Tutankhamen, and a host of other New Kingdom mummies are revealed in a gripping new book by Zahi Hawass and Sahar Saleem, as Kimberley Watt illuminates.
Ancient Egyptian police and punishment
Stab wounds found on Ancient Egyptian skeletons suggest corporal punishment was used at the New Kingdom site of Amarna.
Mummified cat
What is it? This small wooden coffin contains the mummified remains of a cat and dates to the Ptolemaic period of Ancient Egypt, c.305-30 BC. Animals were highly honoured throughout Egyptian history. They were often associated with gods, and therefore…