Evidence for the world’s first case of metal contamination has been discovered in the sediments of an ancient harbour at Giza. The harbour, close to the Great Pyramid of Khufu, was located on a now defunct branch of the Nile,…
What was it like to visit Egypt as a tourist just before the First World War?
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.
Researchers from the University of North Carolina (USA), using remote sensing and other geophysical methods, have identified sections of an extinct branch of the Nile which flowed close to the line of Old and Middle Kingdom pyramids between Giza and…
Evidence of an ancient hydraulic engineering system has been discovered along the banks of the Nile by the British Museum’s Amara West Research Project. Satellite imagery and aerial drone and ground surveys revealed a 600-mile network of nearly 1,300 river…
Do you recognise where in Egypt this photograph was taken?
The study suggests that the existence of a Nile branch during the Old Kingdom allowed the Egyptians to transport heavy stone blocks by water close to where these monuments were built.
Coinciding with the centenary of the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun, a major exhibition Daughters of the Nile: women and society in ancient Egypt opens in Madrid (Spain). Its curator, Nacho Ares, invites us on a journey into the past to learn about the role of women in the world of the ancient pharaohs.
In this issue HW looks at how this major source of protein was shared among the ancient Egyptian population, and asks, “Who ate all the fish?”
Flinders Petrie is called the father of Egyptian archaeology; well, he was assisted on all of his excavations by his wife Hilda, who has never really achieved the due recognition that she deserves.
68 of the 110 tombs date back to the Predynastic civilisation in Lower Egypt, which lasted from c. 6000-3300 BC.
The sands of ancient Nubia, a region over-lapping southern Egypt and northern Sudan, are home to remains of cities, forts, and numerous pyramids. It was to these archaeologically rich sands that the Harvard University–Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition headed…
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.
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.
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.