It’s a steamy November day in the southern Egyptian city of Luxor, and the tourists tramping through the ancient temples of Luxor and Karnak are sweating. But the city’s famed 7,000-year-old antiquities are feeling the heat too.
Increasingly high temperatures linked to climate change, as well as wilder weather, particularly heavy rains and flooding, are taking a growing toll on the ancient stonework, said Abdelhakim Elbadry, a restoration expert who works at Karnak temple.
During investigation of the funerary complex of the 5th Dynasty pharaoh Djedkare Isesi (r. ca. 2381–2353 B.C.), a team from the Czech Institute of Egyptology discovered the painted tomb of a high-ranking Old Kingdom Egyptian dignitary. After descending a narrow subterranean tunnel that opened up into a series of rooms, members of the team, led by archaeologist Mohamed Megahed, found hieroglyphs on the walls announcing that a man named Khuwy was entombed within the chamber. The writing also enumerates Khuwy’s many titles, including “Secretary of the King,” “Companion of the Royal House,” and “Overseer of the Tenants of the Great House.”
During excavations carried out at the Funerary Temple of king Amenhotep III, an Egyptian-German archaeological mission led by Horig Sourouzian unearthed a large part of a granodiorite colossus of a standing falcon-headed god Horus.
Sourouzian said the statue is missing the legs, and the arms are broken, but the head and torso are very well preserved.
The 1.85-metres-tall statue depicts the ancient Egyptian deity Horus wearing the divine pleated kilt held around the waist with a horizontally pleated belt.
In October, the Nile Scribes led their first tour to Egypt, stopping in Aswan, Luxor, and Cairo. Agilika Island, located in the river at Aswan, is now the home of Philae Temple. It was moved there in the 1960s, piece by piece, from neighbouring Philae Island, now underwater. The island is a regular spot for visitors to southern Egypt thanks to its gorgeous setting in the Nile, but we were anxious to visit the temple complex for another reason: hieroglyph hunting. Philae contains the last known instances of inscriptions that were written using both the hieroglyphic and Demotic scripts. This week we are introducing our readers to both inscriptions, and showing you how you can see them for yourself on your next visit to Philae.
Death isn't exactly a comfortable topic of conversation in our modern culture. But in countless societies around the world and throughout time, death has been openly discussed, revered and even celebrated. Ancient Egypt is no exception — case in point, the deity Anubis, otherwise known as Inpu or Anpu, aka the god of death.
"Anubis is the Egyptian god of mummification, and one of the many deities related with the afterlife," says M. Victoria Almansa-Villatoro, Ph.D. candidate in Egyptology at Brown University. "He is usually depicted as either some sort of canid, or as a cynocephalus god."
NOTE: Don't despair. Read the end of the article. Peseshet is a genuine hero of the modern feminist struggle.
Merit Ptah. In recent decades, the name of this ancient Egyptian doctor, said to have lived nearly 5,000 years ago, has become a figurehead of women in science, technology, maths, and engineering (STEM).
She is credited as being the "first woman known by name in the history of science". But there's a bit of a problem - Merit Ptah probably didn't exist. Not as described, at any rate.
Egyptologist Lara Weiss is curator at The National Museum of Antiquities and has been leading the VIDI research project ‘Walking Dead’ since 2017. The exhibition ‘Sakkara: Living in a necropolis’h will be on display at the museum starting March 9 next year.
Nikola Tesla died somewhat unappreciated but his fame and the myth around him has continued to grow tremendously into our times. He is now perceived as the ultimate mad scientist, the one who essentially invented our times, credited with key ideas leading to smartphones, wi-fi, AC electrical supply system, and more.
Besides ideas that Tesla implemented and patented, he also had many other interests in different fields of research, some quite esoteric. One of the most unusual was his preoccupation with Egyptian pyramids, one of humanity's most mysterious and magnificent constructions.
Series 1, episode five of I Know This Place takes a trip into the past with Egyptologist Kara Cooney
Episode: 5 Featuring Ute Junker and Dr Kara Cooney
The pyramids at Giza are simply awe-inspiring; but they are just the start. Egypt is home to a dazzling collection of ancient tombs and temples, some of which date back 5000 years. Egyptologist Dr Kara Cooney talks us through ancient Egypt’s don’t-miss destinations, and tells us more about the intriguing civilisation that built these incredible monuments.
The answer according to the current scientific evidence is … YES (no, I'm not shouting)
Because that is how archaeology works, we collect evidence from as many sources as possible, and if it all points in one direction we draw conclusions. The pseudo crowd bleating that we all follow the party line in an elaborate cover up may work for politicians (looking at world politics consider me sceptical), but in science a whole bunch of fields rely on accumulating evidence … no evidence = no theory.
… or rather you can have as many theories as you like at home over a cabernet sauvignon, but for anybody with half a brain to believe them you have to prove it in writing, with evidence.
There's a bit of Indiana Jones in everyone, which is why people continue to be fascinated by ancient Egyptians and their tombs, says Julián Zugazagoitia, the Director and CEO of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.
That, he says, and "we all search for immortality in some way or another."
At its core, Zugazagoitia says, Egyptian art is about preserving the "life presence" of a person. Egyptians believed that for the soul to live in the other world, the person needed to have her depiction in sculpture form.
Human societies need food—and that often means wheat, which was first cultivated more than 12,000 years ago. Today, around one in five calories consumed by humans is from wheat. Over this time, humans have moved wheat species around the globe and transformed them through cultivation and breeding.
. . .
In Pharaonic Egypt, emmer was the most common wheat. It is claimed that the Romans therefore referred to hulled wheat as Pharaoh's wheat, which could be the linguistic root of "farro". Egyptians may have found that emmer wheat suited the local climate or that the hulls protected the grain from pests in storage.
Britain was fascinated by ancient Egypt long before Howard Carter found Tutankhamun’s tomb, with Napoleon’s Middle Eastern campaign (1798–1801) igniting interest across Europe. Nevertheless, the discovery in 1922 of King Tut’s final resting place sparked a new wave of Egyptomania.
When Philip Glass’s Akhnaten appeared recently at English National Opera, in a spellbinding production by Phelim McDermott, it quickly became a sold-out sensation. Audiences were enthralled not just by the mesmerizing score but also by the glorious, colorful stage pictures and hypnotic dramatic flow. Anthony Roth Costanzo’s gripping performance of the title role—complete with extended opening nude scene—was hailed as a triumph. The production even incorporated juggling, with choreographer Sean Gandini’s troupe bringing ancient Egypt to life with their virtuoso routines.
Scans of an ancient cat mummy revealed that the 2,500-year-old feline supposedly resting within the wrappings wasn't a single animal. Instead, the mummy held the partial remains of three cats, according to new findings.
Ancient Egyptian cat mummies aren't uncommon, and archaeologists have previously found tens of cat mummies in burials. In ancient Egypt, pets were commonly buried with their owners. The desire to preserve animals as offerings to the gods led to the establishment of an entire industry and the mummification of over 70 million animals, according to a previous Live Science report.
As the UK welcomes a new exhibition on Tutankhamun's tomb – considered by many the greatest archaeological discovery of all time – mystery still surrounds ancient Egypt's most famous son. Here, Joann Fletcher unearths seven intriguing truths about the pharaoh and his legendary treasures
Egyptian coffins are inscribed with spells and images which stand in for spells. All function together as a machine to resurrect the deceased and to guide them safely through the next world. Given this function, its perhaps surprising that the texts from coffins are usually published completely divorced from their position on the coffin. Any additional meaning conferred on the texts by their placement on the surrogate body or relative to each other and the vignettes is lost. In order to understand a coffin as a magical machine, it's necessary to view the spells in 3D so that this relationship can be taken into account.
The aim of this project is to explore the relationship between texts and their positioning on a magical object through building annotated 3D models of coffins displaying the texts and translations.
Ever wondered what those curious Egyptian symbols – hieroglyphs – actually represent? We did the research and compiled a comprehensive list of the most common symbols and their meanings, so that you don’t have to.
As one of the oldest known human civilisations, Ancient Egypt has captured the imaginations of people for centuries. Known for its mummies, pyramids and pharaohs, there are few civilisations as impressive – especially considering that it lasted for an incredible 3000 years.
How did Ancient Egypt thrive for so long? It is believed that religion and written language were largely responsible for the civilisation’s success, as they allowed for ancient knowledge and values to be communicated between generations.
DePaul does not harbor an especially large history department, let alone a department specifically dedicated to archaeology. As a result, a DePaul student might be surprised to hear that one of their own professors received a $75,000 grant for an archaeological preservation project. However, those who know Professor Scott Bucking were anything but surprised.
“He is irrepressible,” said longtime colleague and Associate Dean Margaret Storey. “He is deeply committed to his field, creative, determined, and he has a passion for what he does,” she continued.
Bucking applied for the grant to preserve a group of archaeological remains in Beni Hassan, a mountainous region of Egypt that sits along the Nile River Valley.
The civilization of ancient Egypt has always fascinated all those who came across it, local or foreigner. Spanning for 5,000 years of history, ancient or Pharaonic Egypt had left behind more artefacts than any other civilization in the world, from the colossal Pyramids of Giza to the many sculptures and mummies.
Ever since Egyptology as an interdisciplinary branch of history, archaeology, and science were established, more and more about their history came to be known to the world, and every year around the world, exhibitions about Egypt and its history open door to the public to deliver this knowledge. Here are some of these exhibitions that are making headlines in Autumn.
Imhotep was an Egyptian chancellor to the pharaoh Djoser, who is believed to have also been the mastermind behind the Step Pyramid in Saqqara. The Third Dynasty is remembered as being a great author of wisdom texts and also a physician, but the location of his tomb has been unknown for thousands of years, despite great efforts to find it. Until now.
Tony Robinson revealed during his new Channel 5 series “Opening Egypt’s Tomb” how a group of locals stumbled across what archaeologists believe to be Imhotep’s tomb.
Through Gemstones, a Glimpse into ancient Egyptian Civilization Though these restrung beads were found in a grave in Amara West, in Sudan, they were also likely to have been worn in life, too. The reddish-orange beads are carnelian, the faded-blue beads are faience, and the white are ostrich eggshell, which was very popular in ancient Egypt. (Photo: Spencer et al. Amara West: Living in Egyptian Nubia , 69)
On the second day of fieldwork in Abydos, Egypt, Penn doctoral student Shelby Justl stumbled upon something rare: an inscribed piece of ancient limestone called an ostracon. “You rarely find writing in Egyptian archaeology. Writing is either on papyrus, which decays easily, or on stone that fades over time,” she explains. “I translated the text and determined this was a land-transfer document, a bill of sale of two arouras of land.”
In 1919, a Chicago man with an opulent handlebar mustache had a radical idea. That man was James Henry Breasted, founder of the Oriental Institute (OI) at the University of Chicago. His radical idea was that scholars should look toward the ancient Middle East, rather than only examining ancient Greece or Rome, to understand the story of western civilization. Now, 100 years later, OI is celebrating its past by looking toward its future.
Breasted was born in 1865 in Rockford, Illinois. He began studying Egyptology at graduate school at the University of Berlin, becoming the first American to hold a PhD in the subject. He started teaching at the University of Chicago in 1894. In addition to his interest in the ancient Middle East, he could read, write, or speak several languages, including Greek, Latin, Aramaic, Syriac, Assyrian, Ancient Egyptian, and more.
While wrestling can be found all across the African continent, historical context has greatly focused on ancient Egypt. The country’s incredible Pharaonic tradition and later connection to the Roman Empire made it a topic of interest for Western study. The Victorian era saw the rise of Egyptologists from the English and French gentry, which led to the subsequent proliferation of information on Egypt that also overshadowed the remainder of the continent. As such, much of the information of wrestling’s ancient roots can be traced back to Egypt.
Egypt’s Minister of Antiquities Dr. Khaled Al-Anani announced on Thursday two new archaeological discoveries carried out by an Egyptian expedition in the Valley of the Kings, known as the Valley of the Monkeys in Luxor, under the auspices of prominent archaeologist and Egyptologist Dr. Zahi Hawass.
Dr. Hawass, head of excavation mission, said that the Egyptian expedition, which has been working in the Valley of the Monkeys since December 2017, has succeeded to uncover an industrial area there for the first time ever.
From the various looks we have sported across the centuries, the Ancient Egyptian look stands out as one of the more memorable ones in the history of makeup. This is not a surprise, for the Ancient Egyptians were avid lovers of cosmetics. Their heavily kohl-lined eyes are instantly recognizable and often recreated in Hollywood blockbusters, the most famous portrayal being Elizabeth Taylor’s Cleopatra.
Our Dark Materials: Rediscovering an Egyptian Collection examines Stanford University's forgotten collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts, which provides insight into the experiences of ordinary Egyptians in daily life and death.
This publication is a digital supplement to a physical exhibit on view in 2018–2019, providing additional content and interactive features. The site uses a non-linear multimedia platform to highlight the special aspects of Stanford University Archaeology Collections’ Egyptian collection: the artifacts’ material qualities, the ways they reflect everyday life and death, and their connections to the history of Egyptology.
Egyptian history is taking over Rio de Janeiro's Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil ( CCBB ) starting October 12. 'Ancient Egypt: from day-to-day to eternity' will feature 140 pieces straight fromMuseo Egizio , in Turin, Italy, which boasts the second-biggest collection on Egypt in the world – trailing only the Cairo Museum, in Egypt's capital.
But curators Pieter Tjabbes and Paolo Marini want more. The idea is to also captivate people unfamiliar with the subject. Tjabbes explains that the exhibit will combine antiquities and 'instagrammable' spots conducive to photos that spread through the internet and ultimately become advertising for an event.
The ancient doodle was designed to help the dead reach the afterlife by guiding them through the perilous obstacles of the underworld.
The coffin and its artwork were discovered in a burial shaft in the Egyptian necropolis of Dayr al-Barsha.
An inscription on two wooden panels recovered by archaeologists is a mix of hieroglyphs and symbols known to the Ancient Egyptians as The Book of Two Ways.
It depicts two zigzagging lines that detail two routes the dead can use to reach Osiris – the Ancient Egyptian god of the dead – in the afterlife.
On four consecutive evenings, from 15 to 18 October, the Cairo Opera Ballet Company and the Cairo Opera Orchestra, conducted by Mohamed Saad Basha, will stage the ballet Cleopatra. The ballet is choreographed by José Perez.
This is the first time that the Cairo Opera House has produced its own take on the famous queen, following a commission of Egyptian composer and conductor Mohamed Saad Basha earlier this year.
“I was commissioned to compose music for a new ballet, Cleopatra, by the Cairo Opera House in February,” composer Saad Basha told Ahram Online.
A Donkey Called Rameses Scene from the New Kingdom tomb of Panehsy and Tarenu, TT16 (Dra Abu el-Naga)
In the village of Deir el-Medina, the home of the workmen who built the royal tombs of the Valley of the Kings, donkeys were big business. While scenes from the New Kingdom show pharaoh riding a horse-drawn chariot into battle, neither horses nor camels played a part in the day-to-day lives of villagers – camels weren’t even introduced into Egypt until a millennium later (see here). Donkeys were the principal beast of burden, and still play an important part in village life in Egypt today.
"Kenneth Branagh’s ‘Death on the Nile’ to Be Filmed in Egypt." Wonder Woman’s Gal Gadot, Black Panther’s Letitia Wright, and Call Me by Your Name’s Armie Hammer are all set to star in Kenneth Branagh’s Death on the Nile (photos: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images, Rich Fury/Filmmagic, Christopher Polk/Getty Images)
Kenneth Branagh’s Death on the Nile, the sequel to his 2017 box office hit Murder on the Orient Express, has finally been cleared for production, Den of Geek reports. Filming is already underway at Longcross Studios outside London and on location in Egypt. . .
Security forces on Saturday arrested a criminal gang with 193 statues and a sarcophagus in Giza which dates back to the fourth dynasty of ancient Egypt.
The suspects have found the ancient pieces inside a cemetery in Giza. The public prosecution and the Tourism Ministry were notified to take legal action.
In February 2019, a man was arrested over illegally digging under his house in Giza in search for artifacts, as part of Tourism police's crackdown against illicit trade in antiquities.
Picture of the Week
This rare model of the Egyptian scarab beetle creator god Khepri, with a human head and arms emerging from a scarab’s exoskeleton. In many cases, Khepri is presented in a very matter-of-fact way (either as a large beetle or as a human with a scarab for a head) but the above example deserves special mention. It's most likely from the Late Period, ca. 664-332 BC. Now in the Egyptian Museum of Berlin.
Dung beetles were thought to generate spontaneously from the soil and their dung-rolling mirrored the daily journey of the sun disc across the sky. As such, they were potent symbols in Egyptian iconography, representing the solar deity Khepri.
This new exhibition explores Freud’s enduring fascination with Egypt evident both in his writings and in his collection of antiquities.
A painting of Oedipus’ encounter with the Sphinx famously hung beside Freud’s couch. Nobody doubts the significance of Oedipus to the development of Freud’s thought but the presence of the Sphinx reminds us of his less celebrated interest in Egyptian culture. Egyptian artefacts form the largest part of Freud’s collection and lie behind his ‘archaeological metaphor’ – one of his most productive methods for exploring the psyche and developing the practice of psychoanalysis.
We are fortunate to have many surviving pieces of Egyptian literature and religious writings, allowing us to translate, read, and share stories that were originally composed in the ancient past. We have previously looked at the story of Osiris and Isis, one of the most famous tales from ancient Egypt. Today, we’re going to be looking at a very different tale, however – one known amongst Egyptologists by the rather unusual name, “the Myth of the Heavenly Cow”.
Alessandro Ricci’s travels to Egypt and Sudan took place a few years before the birth of Egyptology in 1822, the year Jean-Francois Champollion deciphered the hieroglyphs. His work, a detailed account of his journeys enriched with beautiful drawings of ancient monuments, was never published in his lifetime. Ricci is little known today yet his contemporaries, including Champollion, unanimously acknowledged the artistic qualities of his work, essentially epigraphic copies of reliefs, temple decorations and inscriptions.
KV 11 Revisited Two of the ships depicted in Room Bb of the tomb. Frontispiece of the 1978 edition of Wilkinson’s The Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, Vol. II.
The tomb of Ramesses III (KV 11) is one of the most renowned places in the Valley of the Kings, but also one of the most threatened by progressive decay. After several floods, between 1885 and 1914, a major part of the wall decoration was lost forever. Although it has been one of the most frequently visited tombs since antiquity, it still remains unpublished. Nevertheless, it is possible to reconstruct a substantial part of the decoration from the notes, drawings and squeezes produced by early travellers and researchers. “KV 11 revisited” is part of The Ramesses III (KV 11) Publication and Conservation Project.
Egyptology (video)
From Cairo to Luxor, Egyptologists are working alongside physicists and engineers to try to solve the secrets of the pharaohs. Using non-invasive exploration techniques which won’t damage the monuments, teams of researchers began scanning Egypt’s pyramids in October 2015.
The tomb of Menna (Theban Tomb 69, or TT69), is one of the most beautiful of the “Tombs of the Nobles” on the West Bank at Luxor, but is not a part of the regular “tourist trail”, meaning that you’ll almost certainly be able to visit it in peace and quiet.
Note: I love the tickets to sites in Egypt, shown to the left here. Every time I go, I bring home a collection.
A rare Egyptian scarab seal, possibly belonging to a senior Egyptian official, was found at the Tel Shiloh archaeological site in Samaria. Archaeologists estimate it is 3,000 years old.
The scarabs were carved in the shape of a dung beetle, a creature of cosmological significance in ancient Egypt. Numerous scarabs have been found in archaeological excavations in Israel.
Marine archaeologists probing sunken ancient Egyptian settlements have discovered the remains of a temple and several boats containing treasures like coins and jewelry.
Egyptian and European researchers spent two months probing the remains of Heracleion and Canopus off the coast of the Nile Delta, Egypt's Ministry of Antiquities reported. They used a sophisticated scanning device to uncover new parts of the ancient settlements.
The Egyptian-European Archaeological Mission of the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology concluded its archaeological season at the ruins of the ancient Greek cities Heraklieon and East Canopus in Abi Qir Bay, Alexandria. The mission had been operating for almost two months.
Ehab Fahmy, head of the Central Department of Sunken Antiquities, said that the mission used the latest scanning devices to capture images of archaeological remains buried beneath the seabed.
The discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb was never photographed. This will come as a surprise to archaeology enthusiasts familiar with photographs like the one often identified as Howard Carter caught in the moment of opening the tomb in November 1922.
In fact, the photo dates to early January 1924, the second winter Carter and his colleagues spent working in the jam-packed tomb. We might imagine that Howard Carter is kneeling to look in awe at the face of Tutankhamun, or at least something suitably gold and glorious. In fact, Carter was looking at the still-closed doors of another shrine inside and he was dazzled, not by gold, but by (as he put it) the “mystic mauve” glow of photographic reflectors just out of shot. Held by unnamed Egyptian co-workers, those reflectors were required by the tomb’s official photographer, Harry Burton, to bounce electric lamplight around the cramped, dark space and yield the desired effects of light and shadow.
On 26th April of the 24th year of reign of an unspecified Roman emperor (probably Commodus, which equals the year 184 AD), a modest Egyptian priest named Bes, son of his namesake and a lady called Tadinebhau, died in Pernebwadj, a provincial town in Middle Egypt—then a remote region within the vastness of the Roman empire. We know almost the precise address in Pernebwadj at which Bes had resided during his lifetime, within the town’s ‘tenth quarter’. Such detailed information stems from neither an inscription on Bes’ tomb walls nor a papyrus, but from a much more unassuming object: his mummy label (UC 45626).
Oh, Hollywood!
Unpublished backstage photographs from The Ten Commandments by Cecil De Mille in 1956 in the area of Deir El Bahari.
Tech Wizardry Solves Mysteries Of Egypt's Royal Mummies Seti I Sahar Saleem ROUGHLY 400 MILES from the Great Pyramids, ancient pharaohs of the New Kingdom lay at rest in the Valley of Kings. Nondescript chambers built into the valley's dusty hills hold royal remains, buried between 1550 and 1070 BC. The crypts were designed to deter robbers, and for the most part, they worked—which makes it difficult for today’s archaeologists to find them and identify their inhabitants.
But new techniques are giving researchers a better look into the tombs.
