Showing posts with the label Egypt

Sadd el-Kafara: The Oldest Dam in The World

Nov 6, 2023

About 40 km southeast of Cairo, close to the town of Helwan, lie the ruins of the Sadd-el-Kafara, a large embankment dam built approximately...

The Diary of Merer: A 4,500-Year-Old Papyrus That Details The Construction of The Great Pyramid

Jul 22, 2022

The Great Pyramids of Giza has been one of the world’s greatest enigmas—how did an ancient society build such massive monuments without the ...

Deciphering Fragments of Egyptian Ceramics

Apr 22, 2022

In February 2022, archaeologists discovered over 18,000 Egyptian ostraca in Athribis. The news was full of headlines about pottery fragments...

Treaty of Kadesh: The World’s First Peace Treaty

Mar 10, 2022

On the walls of the Temple of Karnak near Luxor, Egypt, and on the temple of Pharaoh Ramesses II in Thebes, are engravings that describe a g...

Ancient Board Games

Jan 28, 2022

Playing games is a great way to socialize with friends and pass time in an enjoyable way. Humans recognized this a long time ago before ther...

Canal of the Pharaohs: The Forerunner to The Suez Canal

May 21, 2021

The Suez Canal may be a marvel of modern engineering, but there is nothing modern about digging canals. Navigable waterways have been dug si...

The Cave of Swimmers

Jan 14, 2021

Thousands of years ago, the Sahara was surprisingly green with rich vegetation, trees and lakes that covered almost all of what is now sandy...

The Turin Erotic Papyrus

Nov 5, 2020

The Turin Erotic Papyrus is an ancient Egyptian papyrus scroll-painting that has long been a subject of intense interest among Egyptologists...

Abu Ballas: The Pottery Hill

Oct 3, 2020

In 1917, British surveyor Dr. John Ball made an unusual discovery in the Libyan desert in Egypt. About 180 km south-west of the Dakhla Oases...

The Relocation of Abu Simbel Temples

Jul 27, 2020

Hundreds of towns and villages have perished due to massive earth-moving projects such as the construction of dams. But the temples at Abu S...

The Pigeon Breeders of Cairo

Dec 3, 2019

Perched on rooftops across Cairo, like water tanks on elevated platforms, are rickety wooden cages where Cairenes keep their pigeons. Pigeo...

The Ancient Egg Hatcheries of Egypt

Sep 11, 2019

Chickens that are raised in farms are almost never hatched by their mothers. Instead, they are hatched using artificial heat in large elect...

Edwin Smith Papyrus: The 3,600-Year-Old Textbook of Surgery

Feb 11, 2019

In 1862, an American Egyptologist named Edwin Smith bought an ancient scroll of papyrus from an Egyptian dealer. Smith didn’t know how to re...

The Ancient Portraits of Fayuum Mummies

Jan 22, 2019

These haunting portraits of long-dead men, women and children come from a vast region known as the Fayuum Basin, located immediately to the ...

A Short History of Showering

Jan 8, 2019

Personal hygiene hasn’t always been an integral part of grooming, yet the need to clean oneself easily and quickly was as pressing in ancien...

How War Marooned 15 Ships in The Suez Canal For Eight Years

Sep 25, 2018

The Arabs and the Jews have never got along. Since the rise of Zionism and Arab nationalism towards the end of the 19th century, the two gro...

Saint Catherine's Monastery And The World’s Oldest Library

May 12, 2018

Deep in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt, in a region of wilderness made up of granite rock and rugged mountains, lies the town of Saint Catheri...

Bir Tawil: The Land No Country Wants

Feb 26, 2018

Wedged between the borders of Egypt and Sudan is a small parcel of land that is truly unique in this world. It is one of the last unclaimed ...

Whale Graveyards

Feb 22, 2018

Movement of the earth’s crust over millions of years have drastically changed the geography of the planet such that what is land now was onc...

The Unfinished Obelisk of Aswan

Oct 18, 2017

The granite quarries located along the Nile, in the city of Aswan, supplied some of the finest quality stones for the construction of temple...