Neolithic skull.
Stone Age people in Egypt showed great respect for their dead, providing a glimpse of what was to come in the Dynastic period.
Mstyslav Chernov
In the shadow of the pyramids of Giza, lie the tombs of the courtiers and officials who built these vast structures.
Shutterstock
Ancient quarry workers left messages carved on walls like a 4,500-year-old form of social media.
Andrea Raffin/Shutterstock.
Tapping into ancient knowledge can help us feel connected to our ancestors – but that doesn’t mean we should take their advice.
The Turin mummy was deliberately preserved, not just desiccated by dry, hot sands.
R. Bianucci
A body in an Italian museum reveals that Egyptians living 1,500 or more years before the Pharaohs already knew how to preserve bodies.
Voyagerix/Shutterstock.com
The persistent stigma surrounding incontinence has paralysed today’s inventive minds.
Agatha Christie Trust
How 4,000-year-old papyrus letters prompted the queen of crime fiction to write Death Comes as the End.
Piazza del Popolo.
Wikimedia Commons
From the Temple of Heliopolis to the centre of Rome, the massive stone column has boosted the egos of several powerful men.
Khufu’s pyramid is the largest in the Giza pyramid complex.
Ricardo Liberato/wikipedia
Cosmic particles called muons may revolutionise many areas of science.
The Valley of the Kings in ancient Egypt proved a useful testing ground for examples of osteoarthritis.
Anne Austin
Bones and texts showed how decades of strenuous hikes led to higher levels of osteoarthritis in workers’ knees and ankles in an ancient Egyptian village.
The pyramids of Giza on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt.
Mohamed Abd El Ghany/Reuters
The belief that ancient Egyptians needed help from supernatural beings to built the Giza pyramids relies, unavoidably, on racism and colonial attitudes.
Universal
Tut-mania reigned in the 1920s – and keeps returning to haunt us.
The Mummy, in its 2017 rendition, rehashes an 80-year-old franchise focused on revived Egyptian corpses.
AlloCine
Mummies are scary but they also fascinate us, giving us the feeling that we can vanquish time by preserving our most perishable feature: flesh.
Sofia Boutella rises from the dead in The Mummy.
Universal Pictures
The Mummy, starring Tom Cruise and Russell Crowe, is the latest manifestation of our centuries old fascination with Egypt. But beneath this obsession is a darker story of looting and destruction.
Fallen star sword.
Daniella Comelli/University of Pisa
Research has confirmed a knife found in the ancient Egyptian pharaoh’s tomb was made with metal from the heavens.
Latent fingermarks dusted with micronised Egyptian blue on a $20 note, viewed in the Near Infrared.
Simon Lewis
The ancient Egyptians knew a thing or two about how to produce a vibrant blue pigment for their tombs and coffins. Now it’s being used to help find fingerprints.
EPA
It takes more than a quick scan for high-tech archaeology to reveal history’s secrets.
The Pantheon dome - made entirely out of concrete.
MatthiasKabel/wikimedia
Think atomic theory was invented in the 19th century? Try 5th century BC.
An artist’s rendering of the planned Alexandria Underwater Museum.
Jacques Rougerie
In an attempt to revive Egypt’s crucial tourism industry, its government has launched a series of sensational projects.
Popular in the 18th century were events at which mummies were dissected by doctors and passed around the audience to be touched, smelt and tasted. Mummymania installation view.
Jodie Hutchinson
Egyptian mummies have fascinated Europeans since the 5th century, but a new exhibition considers the more recent role they have played in medicine, art and popular culture – and the ethics of their display in museums.