Cracking the Egyptian Code Reviews

This authoritative publication remains the definitive source for the findings of the various archaeological excavations undertaken in Egypt. Published under the auspices of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, its contributors include some of the most well-known Egyptologists in the world, covering a broad range of archaeological disciplines and spectrums. Volume 84 includes reports from Egyptian, Spanish, Polish, British, German, Swiss, French, American, Belgian, and Japanese archaeological missions working in Egypt. Included in this volume are reports on a video exploration of the Queen’s Chamber in the Great Pyramid at Giza; an examination of an ostracon with notations about bread in Demotic script; excavations at North Saqqara, Siwa Oasis, Abydos, the Temple of Thutmosis III at Luxor, Elephantine, Syene and Queen Tausert’s temple in Western Thebes; the recording of rock inscriptions in Wadi Nag el-Birka on an important ancient road leading from Thebes; and documentation and fieldwork at a late Roman fort at Nag al-Hagar, near Kom Ombo.

The latter part of the fifteenth century bc saw Egypt’s political power reach its zenith, with an empire that stretched from beyond the Euphrates in the north to much of what is now Sudan in the south. The wealth that flowed into Egypt allowed its kings to commission some of the most stupendous temples of all time, some of the greatest dedicated to Amun-Re, King of the Gods. Yet a century later these temples lay derelict, the god’s images, names, and titles all erased in an orgy of iconoclasm by Akhenaten, the devotee of a single sun-god. This book traces the history of Egypt from the death of the great warrior-king Thutmose III to the high point of Akhenaten’s reign, when the known world brought gifts to his newly-built capital city of Amarna, in particular looking at the way in which the cult of the sun became increasingly important to even ‘orthodox’ kings, culminating in the transformation of Akhenaten’s father, Amenhotep III, into a solar deity in his own right.