ancient Egypt

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  5/12/2023
  

  Cleopatra's Daughter and Other Key Figures of the Multicultural Roman Empire

  by Mary Beard

  Jane Draycott relates the stories of figures like King Juba II of Mauretania in north Africa, who was reared in Rome as a captive and installed by Augustus to lead a puppet buffer state, which shed important light on the diversity within the empire and the multiple ways that Rome exercised power over its vast dominions. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  5/10/2023
  

  Who's Afraid of a Black Cleopatra?

  by Gwen Nally and Mary Hamil Gilbert

  The controversy over the portrayal of Cleopatra by the Black British actress Adele James highlights the difficulty of reading modern ideas of race and identity back onto the past. But more interesting questions arise around why people in the present seek commonality with past figures. 

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• 11/13/2022
  

  A Hundred Years On, Tutankhamun's Alleged Curse Still Captivates

  by Gill Paul

  The fevered belief that visitors to Tutankhamun's tomb (and their families) were cursed became a media phenomenon in 1922, but popular culture from the Bible to Victorian serial stories and stage plays had already linked mummies and the supernatural. Today, curses persist alongside conspiracy theories to help ease the randomness of tragedy.

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• SOURCE: History.com
  7/12/2021
  

  Why the Nile River Was So Important to Ancient Egypt

  Read an overview of the centrality of the river to Egyptian civilization and the history of efforts to harness the life-sustaining and destructive capacity of the Nile. 

• 
• SOURCE: History channel
  9-14-15
  

  4,000-Year-Old Egyptian Manuscript Found

  A Belgium-based Egyptologist has rediscovered the oldest known Egyptian leather manuscript, dating back more than 4,000 years to late Old Kingdom and early Middle Kingdom (2300-2000 B.C.).

• 
• SOURCE: Live Science
  9-17-14
  

  Ancient Egyptian Woman with 70 Hair Extensions Discovered

  When archaeologists uncovered her remains they found she wore "a very complex coiffure with approximately 70 extensions fastened in different layers and heights on the head."

• 
• SOURCE: Fox News
  3-26-14
  

  1,300-year-old Egyptian mummy had tattoo of Archangel Michael

  A mummy of an Egyptian woman dating back to 700 A.D. has been scanned and stripped to reveal a tattoo on her thigh that displays the name of the biblical archangel Michael.

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• SOURCE: LiveScience
  2-11-14
  

  Drug References Found on Walls of Ancient Egyptian School

  Yes, ancient Egyptian students tripped the light fantastic on opium.

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• SOURCE: Science News
  1-21-14
  

  After 2,000 years, Ptolemy’s war elephants are revealed

  War elephants didn't begin with Hannibal.

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• SOURCE: Phys.org
  1-15-14
  

  American dig unearths tomb of previously unknown pharaoh

  The newly-discovered pharaoh Senebkay ruled 3,700 years ago.

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• SOURCE: LA Times
  8-21-13
  

  Ancient Egyptians forged jewelry beads with meteorites from space

  The earliest known iron beads may come from ancient Egyptian tombs, but they were forged from the hearts of meteorites, scientists say.

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• SOURCE: BBC News
  9-3-13
  

  New timeline for origin of ancient Egypt

  Egyptian civilization developed more quickly than previously thought.

• SOURCE: Der Spiegel
  8-2-13
  

  German boy finds mummy in attic

  Last week 10-year-old Alexander Kettler was playing in the attic of his grandmother's house in the northern German state of Lower Saxony when he came upon three mysterious cases in a cluttered corner. Neither his grandmother nor his father, a local dentist named Lutz Wolfgang Kettler, knew what was inside. So they hauled the dust-covered cases out of the attic, pried them open and peered inside with amazement."There was a huge sarcophagus and inside a mummy," said Lutz Wolfgang Kettler. "Then we opened the other cases and found an earthenware Egyptian death mask and a Canopic Jar," he added, referring to a container in which the ancient Egyptians kept the entrails of the deceased who had been mummified.As to the question of how the 1.6-meter (5.2-foot) mummy could have gotten to the small town of Diepholz, Kettler can only speculate. His father, who passed away 12 years ago, went traveling through North Africa in the 1950s, but spoke very little of his travels. "He was of the older generation who experienced a lot in the war and didn't really talk about anything. I do seem to remember him mentioning having been to the city of Derna in Libya," says Kettler. Had Kettler's father purchased the sarcophagus on his trip, it would have been possible for him to ship it to Diepholz via Bremerhaven....

• SOURCE: Der Spiegel
  7-31-13
  

  Tomb raiders exploit chaos in Egypt

  Egypt's cultural heritage is in danger. Grave robbers, sometimes heavily armed, are taking advantage of political chaos to plunder its poorly guarded archaeological sites. Authorities feel powerless to stop them and fear that ancient treasures might be lost forever....In January 2011, the world-famous Egyptian Museum in Cairo was looted. Rioters destroyed priceless treasures. But valuable ancient relics went missing far from the capital, as well, due to a lack of supervision at historical sites. After the uprising, the repressive security apparatus withdrew everywhere, and the guarding of historical sites was neglected.Two-and-a-half years later, the police are slowly venturing into the streets. But they are mainly concerned with ongoing protests. Elsewhere, some Egyptians are behaving as if the state and its laws have ceased to exist.The army has placed two armored vehicles at the pyramids in Dahshur to deter grave robbers. But, so far, the thieves are undaunted. "We wanted to catch them," says a guard in Dahshur who asked to remain anonymous. "But then they opened fire on us with automatic weapons." He and his fellow guards were only armed with pistols. They jumped for cover, and the grave robbers carried on with their plundering....

• SOURCE: Archaeology News Network
  7-22-13
  

  4,500 year old settlement uncovered in Egypt

  Remains of a settlement from the period of the builders of the great pyramids (Dynasty III-VI) have been uncovered at Tell el-Murra in the Nile Delta by archaeologists from the Institute of Archaeology of the Jagiellonian University. Polish archaeologists have been working at Tell el-Murra since 2008. The settlement is located in the north-eastern part of the Nile Delta, in the vicinity of another site from the same period - Tell el-Farkha, studied by archaeologists from Poznań and Kraków....

• SOURCE: Archaeology News Network
  7-16-13
  

  Have long-lost pyramids been found in Egypt?

  Mysterious, pyramid-like structures spotted in the Egyptian desert by an amateur satellite archaeologist might be long-lost pyramids after all, according to a new investigation into the enigmatic mounds.Angela Micol, who last year found the structures using Google Earth 5,000 miles away in North Carolina, says puzzling features have been uncovered during a preliminary ground proofing expedition, revealing cavities and shafts. "Moreover, it has emerged these formations are labeled as pyramids on several old and rare maps," Micol told Discovery News....

• SOURCE: Discovery News
  5-28-13
  

  Child abuse evident in Roman Egypt

  A 2- to 3-year-old child from a Romano-Christian-period cemetery in Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt, shows evidence of physical child abuse, archaeologists have found. The child, who lived around 2,000 years ago, represents the earliest documented case of child abuse in the archaeological record, and the first case ever found in Egypt, researchers say.The Dakhleh Oasis is one of seven oases in Egypt's Western Desert. The site has seen continuous human occupation since the Neolithic period, making it the focus of several archaeological investigations, said lead researcher Sandra Wheeler, a bioarchaeologist at the University of Central Florida. Moreover, the cemeteries in the oasis allow scientists to take a unique look at the beginnings of Christianity in Egypt....

• SOURCE: Archaeology News Network
  4-30-13
  

  Riddle of ancient Nile kingdom’s longevity solved

  Geomorphologists and dating specialists from The Universities of Aberystwyth, Manchester, and Adelaide say that it was the River Nile which made life viable for the renowned Kerma kingdom, in what is now northern Sudan. Kerma was the first Bronze Age kingdom in Africa outside Egypt.Their analysis of three ancient river channels where the Nile once flowed shows, for the first time, that its floods weren’t too low or too high to sustain life between 2,500 BC and 1,500 BC, when Kerma flourished and was a major rival to its more famous neighbour downstream.They also show that the thousand year civilisation came to end when the Nile’s flood levels were not high enough and a major channel system dried out - though an invasion by resurgent Egyptians was the final cause of Kerma’s demise....

• SOURCE: ANI
  4-25-13
  

  Feeding Egypt's 10,000 pyramid builders

  The builders of the famous Giza pyramids feasted on food from a massive catering-type operation, the remains of which scientists have discovered at a workers' town near the pyramids.The workers' town is located about 1,300 feet (400 meters) south of the Sphinx, and was used to house workers building the pyramid of pharaoh Menkaure, the third and last pyramid on the Giza plateau. The site is also known by its Arabic name, Heit el-Ghurab, and is sometimes called "the Lost City of the Pyramid Builders."...

• SOURCE: Ahram Online
  4-24-13
  

  Graeco-Roman industry in Suez Canal

  An Egyptian excavation mission from the Ministry of State for Antiquities (MSA) uncovered on Thursday a complete industrial area that can be dated to the Graeco-Roman era.The discovery was found during routine excavation work at the archaeological site of Tell Abu-Seifi, located east of the Suez Canal and south of Qantara East. The industrial area includes of a number of workshops for clay and bronze statues, vessels, pots and pans as well as a collection of administrative buildings, store galleries and a whole residential area for labours. Amphora, imported from south of Italy, was also unearthed. "It is a very important discovery that highlights Egypt’s economical and commercial relation with its neighbouring countries on the Mediterranean Sea," MSA Minister Mohamed Ibrahim told Ahram Online. He added that it also gives a complete idea of the Egyptian labours’ daily life....