Egypt Articles

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, as first recorded by Philo of Byzantium in 225 BCE in his work, `On The Seven Wonders’, were: The Great Pyramid at Giza, Egypt; The Hanging Gardens of Babylon; The Statue of Zeus at Olympia, Greece; The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus; The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus; The Colossus of Rhodes and the Lighthouse... [continue reading]

As part of his military invasion of Egypt in 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte and the French government commissioned a group of intellectuals to accompany the French army to Egypt. The result of the French scholars’ efforts in Egypt was the first large-scale systematic study of Egypt. While the military campaign was a failure, the associated cultural appropriation... [continue reading]

For its time, the study and practice of medicine in Ancient Egypt was revolutionary. Primitive by today’s standards, physicians in Egypt nonetheless showed great initiative and impressive knowledge of the human body and its inner workings, as well as the treatment of illness and disease. Surgical intervention was never recommended, and the main treatment... [continue reading]

This thesis discusses the interaction between the concepts of ”justice” (ma’at) and ”law” (hpw) in ancient Egypt. Ma’at, one of the earliest abstract terms in human speech, was a central principle and, although no codex of Egyptian law has been found, there is abundant evidence of written law, designed to realise ma’at... [continue reading]

Representational artistic works were researched as visual evidence for the social, political, religious and economic lifestyles of the ancient Egyptian elite. The aims were to comprehend the status of elite women and to challenge the hypothesis that during the New Kingdom they enjoyed an increased social status in comparison to that of their predecessors... [continue reading]

In chapter 18 of  Hellenistic Egypt (2007, pp. 240-253), Jean Bingen discusses the cultural interactions between the native population of Egypt and its ruling minority of Greek-Macedonians and come to the conclusion that there is not much mutual acculturation between the two. The specific aspect of society and this proposed cultural dualism of Ptolemaic... [continue reading]

Humor is everywhere in the ancient world, not only in comedies proper, but in almost every type of art and literary genre as well. Laughter is often considered the response to humor, but can result from many different stimuli, as is demonstrated by the irony caricature and the animal stories. Ancient Egyptian civilization lasted more than three thousand... [continue reading]

In February 247A.D, Eirenaios the manager (phrontistes) of a unit of the large estate belonging to Aurelius Appianus in the Fayum part of Egypt recorded in his account book that for the month he had employed 500 days of labor from workers unaffiliated with the estate. He paid them 2 drachmae a day. Unlike payments made to permanent employees of the estate... [continue reading]

Egypt is one of the oldest civilizations in the world, with a history spanning thousands of years. During one epoch, known as the New Kingdom (approximately 1570 to 1085 BCE), Egyptian pharaohs actively sought to expand and strengthen their empire with a military that mastered the art of chariot warfare. Egyptians, however, did not invent the chariot... [continue reading]

In this paper I argue that statist (or “despotic”) assumptions of royal power does not adequately describe the nature of political power in the Ptolemaic development of Egypt. I examine the process of Ptolemaic state formation from the point of view of the expansion and the settlement of the Fayyum, the foundation of Ptolemais in the Thebaid... [continue reading]