Ancient Egyptian Religion, Part 7 — Roots Too Deep to Dislodge
We have been watching the force and flow of three concepts in the stream of Egyptian culture and religion through the course of this series — order, duality, and divine magic — which informed Egyptian thought and practice for more than 3,000 years. The business of this article is to go back into the deep past and look at the roots of Egypt’s religious and socioeconomic culture, and then to test the durability of those formative ideas by examining the only major departure — the 18th Dynasty heresy of Akhenaten — which, by threatening the ancient heritage, actually reconfirmed it. [more…]
By Brian Alm
The Birth Bower and Mamissi-Chapels in Ancient Egypt
Kate Phizackerley introduces womens’ experience of child birth in Ancient Egypt and the special birth bowers assigned to this important event. She traces how this involved into a special type of chapel, called a mammis and considers what implications might be drawn from one scene depicting Akhenaten and his queen, Nefertiti. Along the way she covers who might attend a birth and touches on some of the medical texts. [more…]
AWT Conference 2011 Review: Glass Faience and Pottery Making at Amarna (Paul Nicholson)
O45.1: An Ancient Industrial Estate Review by Kate Phizackerley. Published on Egyptological, Magazine Reviews, Edition 3, 7th December 2011 Introduction As described in the overview of the 2011 AWT Conference which I co-authored with Andrea Byrnes (see bottom of this review), Dr Paul Nicholson spoke about his excavation of the Amarna site designated O45.1, which […] [more…]
AWT Conference 2011 Review: Curse of the Pharaoh’s DNA (Jo Marchant)
Review by Kate Phizackerley. Published on Egyptological, Magazine Reviews, 7th December 2011 (Edition 3). Introduction Many people were looking forward to hearing Jo Marchant speak about the DNA tests undertaken by Drs Zink, Pusch et al, and she didn’t disappoint. She was an outstanding speaker. She opened her talk by describing DNA itself, a […] [more…]
AWT Conference 2011 (Amarna) – Overview
The 2011 Ancient World Tours Conference was held at UCL, London over the weekend of 3rd and 4th September and focused on Amarna. The authors attended and offer this overview of the conference. Over the next ten days or so, we shall also be publishing detailed reviews of about half of the sessions in the Magazine section of Egyptological (and will formally become part of the next edition). [more…]
By Andrea Byrnes and Kate Phizackerley
AWT Conference 2011 – Excavating in the Valley of the Kings (Stephen Cross)
As described in the overview of the 2011 AWT Conference co-authored with Andrea Byrnes, the closing keynote lecture was delivered by Stephen Cross. His lecture created a buzz in the room and that has continued since Andrea Byrnes and I first posted about it on our respective blogs. In this account of his lecture, I shall present the theory as described by Cross: this is intended as reportage not as as detailed critique, although obviously a certain level of commentary is included. [more…]
Edition - April, 2011
Book Review: Royal Women of Amarna
Although the Royal Women of Amarna is usually credited to Dorothea Arnold, it was in fact written by a panel of authors who each contributed a section: James P Allen’s contribution is a very short chapter on Atenism, The Religion of Amarna L Green wrote a somewhat longer Who’s Who? of the Amarna period Dorothy […] [more…]