Akhenaten’s devotion to the Aten was not just religious; it was artistic and philosophical. In hymns likely written or commissioned by the king himself, such as the Great Hymn to the Aten, Akhenaten exalts the sun’s warmth as the giver of all life, with language that reads more like sacred poetry than royal decree. This...
King Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV), often thought of as a dreamer-philosopher in a land of warrior-kings, cast aside the mighty pantheon of deities and raised his gaze to a single blazing sun: the Aten. With eyes wide to the heavens and feet planted in the desert dust, he declared a revolution not of armies, but of...
Amenemipet was a distinguished priest of Amun during Egypt’s Third Intermediate Period, roughly between 950 and 900 B.C. (Late 21st–early 22nd Dynasty) who steps from the painted panels of his own coffin as a figure of refined piety and quiet authority, likely serving at the cult centre of Deir el-Bahari where he acted as a...
Dwarfism in Ancient Egypt was not only recognised but often respected, and individuals with dwarfism could hold positions of considerable prestige. Rather than being marginalised, many dwarfs were integrated into society, particularly within elite or sacred spheres, and there were indeed religious and mythological associations that cast their condition in a positive, even divine, light....
Carved from luminous Parian marble, this statue embodies the elegant fusion of Egyptian and Roman divinity: Hermanubis, the jackal-headed Anubis recast in the guise of Mercury. Fashioned in the 1st–2nd centuries A.D., the figure rises a modest 1.55 metres, yet commands attention. A slender solar disc poised on a crescent moon nestles between alert ears,...
Taxation in Ancient Egypt was the very lifeblood of the state, binding ploughman, priest, and pharaoh in a tapestry of obligation. Long before coinage glinted under Persian and Greek rule, dues were rendered in grain, livestock, crafted wares, and, perhaps most valuable of all, labour itself. Our clearest windows onto this bustling fiscal world are...
Tucked away at the very heart of the Temple of Edfu lies its most hallowed chamber, the inner sanctuary; a space imbued with divine presence and ritual potency. Here, enshrined in reverence, once rested the sacred barque of Horus, the falcon-headed god of kingship and the sky. This ceremonial boat, born aloft during great religious...
Nestled within a specially designed museum at the base of the Great Pyramid of Giza, the so-called Khufu ship, more accurately known as the Solar Boat, is one of the most extraordinary archaeological survivals of the ancient world. Discovered in 1954, buried in a sealed limestone pit near the pyramid’s southern face, this full-sized cedar...
This finely carved antelope’s head, once affixed to the prow of a sacred ceremonial boat, hails from the hushed sanctuaries of an Egyptian temple. Hewn from hard stone (perhaps diorite or greywacke) it would have adorned a ritual barque, gliding not upon the Nile but along the sacred imaginations of the priests who summoned the...
This diminutive yet evocative object, which the Met Museum has listed simply as “A Woman and Her Child“, hails from the very dawn of the Ancient Egyptian Dynastic Period, c. 3100–2900 B.C., known as the 1st Dynasty. Discovered at Abydos, one of Ancient Egypt’s most sacred sites and a focal point of royal and religious...
