Ancient Egypt August 6 2018

Grand Egyptian Museum receives head of King Senusert I
King Senusret head - Ministry of Antiquites Offical Facebook Page

The Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) received on Friday the red granite head of the statue of King Senusret I from an antiquities' storehouse in Cairo Citadel in order to be displayed with the opening of the museum in 2019.

In a statement, GEM general supervisor Tareq Tawfiq said the head is carved from red granite and has the common artistic features found in pieces attributed to the Middle Kingdom.

Incredible Electromagnetic Discovery In Great Pyramid Of Giza's Hidden Chambers
Dog enjoying the electronimagnetic energy of the Great Pyramid. © Michalea Moore 2017

The Great Pyramid of Giza is steeped in history and mythology, and as such fascinates researchers from various fields who all want to unravel its many secrets.

Now, an international team of physicists has found that, under the right conditions, the Great Pyramid can concentrate electromagnetic energy in its internal chambers and under its base.

Two Ancient Egyptian tombs uncovered in Minya

The Egyptian-Australian Archaeological Mission of the University of Macquarie, Australia have rediscovered the tombs of two statesmen from the Middle Kingdom of Egypt at the Beni Hassan antiquities area in Minya, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities Mostafa al-Waziry announced.

Ancient Egypt: A Tale of Human Sacrifice?
Subsidiary chambers of the tomb of King Den. Photos by the authors
From our modern perspective, the idea of human sacrifice in ancient Egypt is so exotic as to be desirable. But what evidence would really indicate the practice in ancient Egypt? Is it to be found in the pathology of buried individuals, the architecture, the iconographical record, or in oral and written tradition? Are other interpretations equally if not more valid? Our discussion focuses on the early sites of Adaima, Hierakonpolis, Abydos, and Maadi.

Adaima lies about 550km south of Cairo and was primarily excavated between 1989 and 2005. Its two cemeteries contain almost 900 Predynastic graves studied by osteoarchaeologists and anthropobiologists. Some skeletons showed clear cut marks on the upper vertebrae and it seems that skulls were removed after decomposition. But does this constitute human sacrifice?

How Ancient Egypt Shaped Our Idea of Beauty
These cosmetic pots contained kohl, which the ancient Egyptians applied like eye-liner, perhaps to screen out the sun (Credit: Two Temple Place/Ipswich Museum)

Walking around Beyond Beauty, the new exhibition organised by charitable foundation the Bulldog Trust in the neo-Gothic mansion of Two Temple Place in central London, you would be forgiven for thinking that the ancient Egyptians were insufferably vain.

Jean-Claude Golvin Online
ÉGYPTE - OUADI ES SEBOUA - TEMPLE DE RAMSÈS II
Jean-Claude Golvin is a French architect, archaeologist and former researcher at the CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research - Bordeaux III Michel de Montaigne University). He is the world’s first specialist in the visual reconstruction of great sites from the Antiquity.

He has produced over 1000 drawings of ancient and medieval cities and monuments, most of which are deposited at the Departmental Museum of Ancient Arles – the most active museum in France regarding this period in history, second only to the Louvre.

Here is the direct link to the Egypt page.

Where's the Tomb of King Tut's Wife? Valley of the Kings Dig Leaves Mystery

Before ancient Egyptians constructed a tomb they would dig holes that contained buried artifacts. The tomb would then be built nearby. Recently, in the Valley of the Kings (where King Tut was buried), archaeologists unearthed a set of these "foundation deposits," but to their puzzlement, no tomb has been found.

Women Archaeologists Database!
Image: Margaret Murray and Hilda Petrie

"Breaking Ground may as well have been titled 'Against All Odds,' as the women archaeologists whose lives and careers we remember here faced innumerable challenges and difficulties but prevailed to contribute significantly to the expansion of our knowledge of the ancient world."

Explore this database of the intrepid women of archaeology by Brown University.









Picture of the week: Abu Simbel 1930

Abu Simbel Temples in 1930 before the transfer of The Abu Simbel temples. Known as the "Temple of Ramesses, beloved by Amun" it was one of six rock temples. The smaller temple is dedicated to the goddess Hathor.

It was relocated in its entirety in 1968, because it would have been submerged during the creation of Lake Nasser after the building of the Aswan high dam on the Nile River.

Ancient Egypt February 12

HILDA AND FLINDERS – A RELUCTANT ROMANCE

With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, today’s post takes a look behind the scenes, delving into the archives to tell the story of an unlikely couple, whose tireless work shaped Manchester Museum’s Egyptology collection, and proving that you can find love in the most unexpected places … and that sometimes, opposites really do attract!

Egyptian ibis mummy holds clues to crooks behind ancient clothing caper

The Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna has discovered an ancient Egyptian scroll hidden inside a vessel containing a mummified ibis. In the lengthy text, which are business notes, the scribe names three men he accuses of theft. It dates from around 1100BC.

Janet May Buchanan Scotland's forgotten heroine of Egyptology
Cover of the catalogue put together by Janet May Buchanan, 1912. ©CSG CIC Glasgow Museums Collection

Women in Victorian and Edwardian times made a considerable contribution to British Egyptology. The accolades and academic positions, however, were dominated by men. It was a time when female emancipation was the largest domestic issue in Britain and the politics of most Egyptologists in Britain still mirrored the anti-suffrage views of the majority of contemporary society. Although the contributions to the subject by a few women of this period have received the credit they rightfully deserve, most still remain unsung heroines.

All You Need Is Love: Modern Themes in Ancient Egyptian Love Poems
The site of Deir el-Medina; its unusual location has led to a very good rate of preservation(photograph by Kingtut, distributed under a CC A-SA 3.0 license).

It is easy to get distracted by the largest and most obvious material from ancient Egypt – vast tombs, colossal statues and beautiful jewellery. This can lead to a disconnect in our understanding of what ancient Egyptian life was really like – how ‘normal’ people felt, behaved, and acted. One of the ways that scholars try to connect with ancient Egypt at a personal, individual level is through the translation and understanding of literature written by ancient Egyptians themselves; and on Valentine’s Day, what better way is there to do that than to read some ancient Egyptian love poetry?

Edwardian aristocrats went to Egypt hoping for glamour — but they got dysentery instead
The Great Pyramid of Cheops at Giza, 1910 CREDIT: BUYENLARGE 
Was Egypt the first place ever to have been mourned by the seasoned traveller as “ruined”? At the close of the 1900s, a leisured clergyman and Oxford Professor of Assyriology called the Rev Archibald Sayce, who had spent the previous 18 winters cruising the Nile, sold his beloved “dahabiya” – a kind of houseboat, later incarnations of which will be familiar from Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile – and left Egypt, as “life on the Nile had ceased to be the ideal existence it once was... The smoke of the steamer [had usurped] the sights and scents of the fields”.

Artistic Licence: I was here… in Ancient Egypt
Hieroglyphic graffito of the scribe Ashakhet in the Ptah temple at Karnak. Photograph: CNRS-CFEETK/Pauline Batard

Names, dates, bad jokes, life advice: we find graffiti almost everywhere in modern life.

But not many people realise that scrawling on walls isn’t anything new. At least three thousand years ago, in the dusty heat of Ancient Egyptian temples, people did the very same thing.

Pyramids of the Kingdom of Kush – Map

Image Credit : Valerian Guillo

The Kingdom of Kush was an ancient African kingdom located in Nubia, a region along the Nile rivers encompassing the areas between what is today central Sudan and southern Egypt.

The region was home to three periods of Kushite development through antiquity. The first had its capital based at Kerma (2600–1520 BCE) which was Nubia’s first centralised state with an indigenous form of architecture and burial customs.

Newly discovered buildings reveal clues to ancient Egyptian dynasties (video)

Photo by

G. Marouard

The archaeological excavation of an ancient Egyptian city at Tell Edfu in southern Egypt, led by the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, has discovered well-preserved settlement remains dating to an important turning point in ancient Egyptian history, when the pharaohs began to renew interest in the provincial regions in the far south of their kingdom.

For more on this story, see: Ancient Egyptian beer-making facilities found by archaeologists (video).

Scans to shed light on identity of mummified Egyptian baby on display at Maidstone Museum

Scans are to shed more light on the identity of a mummified Egyptian baby – one of the youngest ever discovered – which for centuries was believed to be the remains of a bird.

The rare relic, part of the collection at Maidstone Museum, underwent more tests after it was found to be the body of a miscarried foetus, and not a 2,300-year-old hawk as originally thought.

Picture of the Week

A picture showing some workers weaving linen from the Egyptian Textile Museum.