Egypt

British scientist Joann Fletcher claims to have discovered the mummy of Egypt’s famous Queen Nerfertiti, claimed by some to have been the most beautiful woman who ever lived. Dr Fletcher, however, has not trawled through acres of sand or stumbled across some long-forgotten catacomb. She is a palaeo-trichologist – which means that she studies...
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Once the Hittite language had been identified and its use of cuneiform writing understood, all sorts of fascinating things began to be discovered, such as the fact that the Hittites were among the first (if not the very first) to domesticate horses and harness them to chariots. However the most interesting feature to emerge...
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One of the most evocative objects on display in the Petrie Museum in London is a head of curly, blonde hair. At first sight one’s impression is that this is a novelty wig, for the tastes of Egyptian woman (and possibly of their men as well) were as sophisticated and varied as those in...
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Robert Schoch, a geologist from Boston University in America, claims that the amount of weathering of the Great Sphinx shows that it was not constructed during the Fourth Dynasty of Egypt but in fact is some two to four thousand years older. As the earliest monumental constructions in Egypt date from about 2600 BC,...
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In 1822, the year that Champollion announced that he had deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphics, a boy was born in Connecticut in the New World. Little is known about Edwin Smith’s childhood; we do know, however, that he became interested in Egypt and its history and in 1861, at the age of 40, he went out...
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When Howard Carter finally cleared his way into the tomb of Tutankhamun he found the chambers crammed full of treasure, lying around in glorious disarray. In one corner stood a couple of chariot bodies and neatly stacked on the floor in front of them were their gilded wheels. As Carter slowly cleared the tomb...
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According to the record in Exodus 2:5-10, "The daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river and her maidens walked along the river’s side. When she saw the ark among the reeds, she sent her maid to get it and when she had opened it, she saw the child and behold, the...
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The earliest known metal statue of anything like life-size proportions is that of Pepi I of the 6th Dynasty of Egypt. This statue, which is actually two statues, one inside the other, was originally found buried in mud and sand inside one of the shrines of the temple at Edfu, which is rather odd,...
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