Installation view of the 2024 Melbourne Winter Masterpieces® Pharaoh, a collaboration between the British Museum and the NGV, on display from June 14 – October 6 2024 at NGV International, Melbourne.
Photo: Sean Fennessy
Many exhibitions of ancient Egyptian art have been held in Australia. Pharaoh, at the National Gallery of Victoria, is outstanding for its scope, scale and presentation.
The pyramids at Giza, like dozens of others, are located several kilometres west of the current path of the Nile.
Alex Cimbal / Shutterstock
Why build pyramids in the desert? A centuries-old puzzle may be answered by the slow wandering of the Nile.
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Beyond the tombs and riches, life in ancient Egypt wasn’t so luxurious, after all.
Andriamamelo cave art panel.
Author provided
Rock art from a Malagasy cave hints at some remarkable cultural connections.
Ramses & the Gold of the Pharaohs exhibition at the Australian Museum in Sydney.
AAP Image/Belad Al-karkhey
A new exhibition in Sydney is just the latest in a long, near continuous, list of Egyptian exhibitions in Australia. How much Egypt can we take?
Jane Levy in a scene from Evil Dead, based on a fictional Sumerian book that summons evil.
Sony Tristar/AAP
Some of popular culture’s most famous ghosts and demons have roots in ancient Mesopotamia. What did ancient humans believe about the supernatural? And what stories did they tell?
Basil Rathbone in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939).
Allstar Picture Library Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo
It is how the detectives respond to superstition which cements the connections between the Conan Doyle and Christie stories
Many snakes were probably much more widespread in ancient Egypt.
Composite image. Mamba: W. Wüster. Pyramids: Ricardo Liberato, CC BY-SA 2.0. Montage: W. Wüster.
Ancient texts are still teaching us new things about the prevalence of wildlife.
Burial ceremonies as depicted in the Book of the Dead of Hunefer.
© The Trustees of the British Museum
There is often a distinct fragrance of pine or cedar, with some spiciness from cloves, cumin, myrrh, and warm notes from plants, flowers and trees.
Museum August Kestner, Hannover. Photo: Christian Tepper.
This Egyptian noblewoman was sweetly scented upon her death, researchers have discovered. And they’ve teamed up with a perfumer to recreate her scent.
A detail from the astronomical ceiling at the Dendera temple in Egypt.
(kairoinfo4u/flickr)
Some time measurements, like months and years, use the movements of the moon and sun, respectively. But other time measurements, like the hour, aren’t clearly connected to astronomical phenomena.
Jewelry of the kandake Amanishakheto from a pyramid at Meroe.
Einsamer Schütze/Wikimedia Commons
The way many Americans think about racial identity today is hard to map onto the complex history of ancient Egypt and ancient Nubia.
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Archaeologists speculate the first soup might have been made by Neanderthals.
Cleopatra (centre) is played by a black actress, Adele James, in the new Netflix docudrama series.
Image courtesy Netflix
The ethnicity outcry says more about today’s preoccupations with race than ancient Egypt’s.
Adele James in Netflix’s Queen Cleopatra.
Courtesy of Netflix
The modern soundtrack and dialogue feels far more anachronistic and intrusive than the diverse casting.
Hellenistic soldiers as depicted in the Nile mosaic of Palestrina.
World History Encyclopedia
We uncovered evidence of a rebellion so significant, that events such as Cleopatra’s affairs and the rise of Christianity may not have come to pass without it.
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Several studies have upended what we thought we knew about mummification using scientific dating techniques to reveal some fascinating – and surprising – insights.
An archaeologist works at the site of the discoveries in Saqqara.
Mohamed Hossam Eldin
Egyptians believed gold was the colour of the gods and gilding the dead expressed the idea that they acquired divine qualities in the afterlife.
Great Zimbabwe.
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Archaeological discoveries show the different options that have solved human problems over time.
The Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza.
Ashy Cat Inc
As the Grand Egyptian Museum begins welcoming visitors ahead of its opening in 2023, one object remains conspicuously absent.