Archaeology and Ancient Egypt

Jewelry was worn by ancient Egyptians at every level of society and, like their modern descendants, they prized it for its aesthetic value, as a way to adorn and beautify the body. It was also a conspicuous signifier of wealth, status, and power. But jewelry in ancient Egypt served another fundamental purpose: its wearers saw it as a means to absorb positive magical and divine powers—to protect the living, and the dead, from the malignant forces of the unseen. The types of metals or stones used by craftsmen were magically important, as were the colors of the materials, and the exact positioning of all the elements in a design.

Ancient Egyptian Jewelry: 50 Masterpieces of Art and Design draws on the exquisite collections in the archaeological museums of Cairo to tell the story of three thousand years of jewelry-making, from simple amulets to complex ritual jewelry to the spells that protected the king in life and assisted his journey to the Otherworld in death. Gold, silver, carnelian, turquoise, and lapis lazuli were just some of the precious materials used in many of the pieces, and this stunningly illustrated book beautifully showcases the colors and exceptional artistry and accomplishment that make ancient Egyptian jewelry so dazzling to this day.

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For the Table of Contents, click here.

This book explores the long-term trends in the development of what was the first complex civilization in history, the Old Kingdom of Egypt (c. 2650–2200 BC), the period that saw the construction of eternal monuments such as Djoser’s Step Pyramid complex in Saqqara, the pyramids of the great Fourth Dynasty kings in Giza, and spectacular tombs of high officials throughout Egypt. The present study aims to show that the historical trajectory of the period was marked by specific processes that characterize most of the world’s civilizations: the role of the ruling elite, the growth of bureaucracy, the proliferation of interest groups, and adaptation to climate change, to name but a few―and the way that these processes held the germ of ultimate collapse. The case is made that the rise and fall of the Old Kingdom state is of relevance to the study of the anatomy of development of any complex civilization.

Rameses III—often dubbed the “last great pharaoh”—lived and ruled during the first half of the twelfth century bc, a tumultuous time that saw the almost complete overthrow of established order in the eastern Mediterranean, and among Rameses’s achievements was the preservation of Egypt as a nation-state in the face of external assault. However, his reign also saw economic challenges, and increasing dissatisfaction, which culminated in the king’s own assassination.
This richly illustrated book is the latest in a series that aims to provide accounts of key figures in ancient Egyptian history that covers not only their life-stories but also their rediscovery and reception in modern times. Accordingly, it follows the king from his birth to his resurrection through modern research, describing the key events of the reign, his major monuments, and the people and events that led to these becoming once again known to the world.

This joint publication project of Cairo University and the University of Tübingen scholars uses modern technologies, including electronic drawing boards, photo merging, and 3-D modeling, to catalogue the late anthropoid sarcophagi housed in Cairo’s Grand Egyptian Museum. Most of this collection was previously known only from the entries in M.-L. Buhl’s The Late Egyptian Anthropoid Stone Sarcophagi (Copenhagen, 1959). This catalogue draws on the efforts of eight team members, each chapter prepared by a joint Egyptian–German team, with the drawings made by the Egyptians and the translations provided by the Germans. The Egyptian Museum photographer Ahmed Amin provided the teams with hundreds of photographs, which were later merged together with the help of Adobe Photoshop. The hieroglyphic texts were composed by JSesh. This, the first catalogue of the Grand Egyptian Museum, was made possible through financial support from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).

In the ancient world the magicians of Egypt were considered the best. But was magic harmless fun, heartfelt hope, or something darker? Whether you needed a love charm, a conversation with your dead wife, or the ability to fly like a bird, an Egyptian magician had just the thing. Christina Riggs explores how the Egyptians thought about magic, who performed it and why, and also helps readers understand why we’ve come to think of ancient Egypt in such a mystical, magical way in the first place.

This book takes Egyptian magic seriously, using ancient texts and images to tackle the blurry distinctions  between  magic, religion and  medicine. Along the way, readers will learn how to cure scorpion bites, why you might want to break the legs off your stuffed hippopotamus toy, and whether mummies really can come back to life. Readers will also (if so inclined) be able to save a fortune on pregnancy tests by simply urinating on barley seeds, and learn how to use the next street parade to predict the future .

A boy and his stuffed bunny gaze at a star-lit New York cityscape. The great Sphinx of Egypt sleeps. A child swings joyously across a river. This book offers a tantalizing glimpse of the adventures of Arthur and his imaginary friend, Bun-Bun. Together they travel through the Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum to another time and place and befriend the lonely boy king, Tutankhamun.

A 2021 International Book Awards finalist in the Children’s Picture Book: Hardcover Fiction category.

To read more about The Boy and the Boy King, click here.

The book is also available on Amazon.com and Bookshop.org.

Listen to an audio excerpt.

The discovery of ancient Egypt and the development of Egyptology are momentous events in intellectual and cultural history. The history of Egyptology is the story of the people, famous and obscure, who constructed the picture of ancient Egypt that we have today, recovered the Egyptian past while inventing it anew, and made a lost civilization comprehensible to generations of enchanted readers and viewers thousands of years later. This, the first of a three-volume survey of the history of Egyptology, follows the fascination with ancient Egypt from antiquity until 1881, tracing the recovery of ancient Egypt and its impact on the human imagination in a saga filled with intriguing mysteries, great discoveries, and scholarly creativity. Wonderful Things affirms that the history of ancient Egypt has proved continually fascinating, but it also demonstrates that the history of Egyptology is no less so. Only by understanding how Egyptology has developed can we truly understand the Egyptian past.

The discovery of ancient Egypt and the development of Egyptology are momentous events in intellectual and cultural history. The history of Egyptology is the story of the people, famous and obscure, who constructed the picture of ancient Egypt that we have today, recovered the Egyptian past while inventing it anew, and made a lost civilization comprehensible to generations of enchanted readers and viewers thousands of years later. This, the third of a three-volume history of Egyptology, follows the progress of the discipline from the trauma of the First World War, through the vicissitudes of the twentieth century, and into Egyptology’s new horizons at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Wonderful Things affirms that the history of ancient Egypt has proved continually fascinating, but it also demonstrates that the history of Egyptology is no less so. Only by understanding how Egyptology has developed can we truly understand the Egyptian past.

A pyramid, as the posthumous residence of a king and the place of his eternal cult, was just a single, if dominant, part of a larger complex of structures with specific religious, economic, and administrative functions. The first royal pyramid in Egypt was built at the beginning of the Third Dynasty (ca. 2592–2544 BC) by Horus Netjerykhet, later called Djoser, while the last pyramid was the work of Ahmose I, the first king of the Eighteenth Dynasty (ca. 1539–1292 BC).
Nearly two decades have passed since distinguished Egyptologist Miroslav Verner’s seminal The Pyramids was first published. In that time, fresh explorations and new sophisticated technologies have contributed to ever more detailed and compelling discussions around Egypt’s enigmatic and most celebrated of ancient monuments. In this newly revised and updated edition, including color photographs for the first time, Verner brings his rich erudition and long years of site experience to bear on all the latest discoveries and archaeological and historical aspects of over 70 of Egypt’s and Sudan’s pyramids in the broader context of their more than one-thousand-year-long development.
Lucidly written, with 300 illustrations, and filled with gripping insights, this comprehensive study illuminates an era that is both millennia away and vividly immediate.

Mut was an important deity perhaps best known as the consort of Amun-Re and the mother of Khonsu, but her earlier and far more independent role was as the daughter of the sun god, much akin to Hathor. Like Nekhbet and Wadjet and the other lioness goddesses (referred to as Sekhmet) she was the “Eye of Re,” who could be both benign and dangerous. In human form, Mut protected the king and his office; as Sekhmet she could destroy Egypt if not pacified.
The Mut precinct was a major religious center from the Eighteenth Dynasty to the Roman Period, but evidence suggests the existence of an even earlier temple. It expanded during the reign of the Kushite king, Taharqa and attained its present size during the fourth century BCE, sheltering three major temples, several small chapels, and eventually, a village within the protection of its massive enclosure walls. One of its most striking features is the hundreds of Sekhmet statues.
In 1976, the Brooklyn Museum began the first systematic exploration of the precinct as a whole. Since 2001, Brooklyn has shared the site with an expedition from the Johns Hopkins University, both teams working cooperatively toward the same goal.
This richly illustrated guide seeks to bring the goddess and her temple precinct the attention they deserve.

Ancient Egyptian medicine employed advanced surgical practices, while the prevention and treatment of diseases relied mostly on natural remedies and magical incantations. In the first of three volumes, The Medicine of the Ancient Egyptians explores these two different aspects, using textual sources and physical evidence to cast light on the state of ancient medical knowledge and practice and the hardships of everyday life experienced by the inhabitants of the land on the Nile. The first part of the book focuses on ancient Egyptian surgery, drawing mainly on cases described in the Edwin Smith papyrus, which details a number of injuries listed by type and severity. These demonstrate the rational approach employed by ancient physicians in the treatment of injured patients. Additional surgical cases are drawn from the Ebers papyrus. The chapters that follow cover gynecology, obstetrics, and pediatric cases, with translations from the Kahun gynecological papyrus and other medical texts, illustrating a wide range of ailments that women and young children suffered in antiquity, and how they were treated. Illustrated with more than sixty photographs and line drawings, The Medicine of the Ancient Egyptians is highly recommended reading for scholars of ancient Egyptian medicine and magic, as well as for paleopathologists, medical historians, and physical anthropologists.

For centuries the beguiling ancient ruins of Egypt have provided an endless source of fascination for explorers, antiquarians, treasure hunters and archaeologists. All, from the very earliest travelers, were entranced by the beauty and majesty of the landscape: the remains of tombs cut into the natural rock of hillsides and the temples and cities gently consumed by drift sand. These early adventurers were gripped by the urge to capture what they had seen in writings, sketches, paintings and photographs. While it was always the scholars—the Egyptologists—who were in charge, they depended on architects, artists, engineers, and photographers. Yet when we think of Petrie, we think of Sir William Matthew Flinders, not of his wife Hilda. Only through reading their diaries and letters has it come to be realized how important she and other partners were. Similarly the role played by Egyptian workers, digging on archaeological projects and maintaining relations with the local landowners, is only just coming to be appreciated. Egyptologists’ Notebooks brings together the work–reproduced in its original form—of the many people who contributed to our understanding of ancient Egypt, offering a glimpse into a very different history of Egyptology. They evoke a rich sense of time and place, transporting us back to a great age of discovery.