2nd Pyramid Bearing Pharaoh Ameny Qemau's Name Is Found

By Owen Jarus, Live Science Contributor | April 4, 2017

A 3,800-year-old pyramid found with an alabaster block bearing the name of pharaoh Ameny Qemau has been discovered at the site of Dahshur in Egypt.

Another pyramid containing artifacts bearing the name of Ameny Qemau (also spelled Qemaw) was discovered in 1957 in Dahshur, a royal necropolis in the desert on the Nile River's west bank. The finding has left Egyptologists with a mystery as to why the same pharaoh seemingly has two pyramids to his name.

The remains of the pyramid's inner structure were discovered by a team of Egyptian archaeologists and announced today (April 4) by the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities.

"The uncovered remains of the pyramid represents a part of its inner structure, which is composed of a corridor leading to the inner side of the pyramid and a hall, which leads to a southern ramp and a room to the western end," Adel Okasha, the director general of the Dahshur necropolis, said in a statement from the ministry.

Within the inner structure, the team discovered an alabaster block containing 10 lines of hieroglyphic writing. The ministry said it had not yet deciphered the writing on the block.

Live Science showed pictures of the pyramid's block, released by the ministry, to several Egyptologists. Both James Allen, a professor of Egyptology at Brown University, and Aidan Dodson, a research fellow at the University of Bristol, said  that inscribed on the block is a type of religious text used to line the walls of pyramids, and that it bears the name of the pharaoh Ameny Qemau.

Mummies' Height Reveals Incest

By Rossella Lorenzi

The height of the pharaohs who ruled ancient Egypt supports historical records that they might have married their sisters and cousins, says new research into 259 mummies.

It's known from historical sources that incestuous marriages were common among the ancient Egyptian royalty. The pharaohs believed they descended from the gods so inbreeding was seen as a way to retain the sacred bloodline.

But it is hard to prove incest in royal marriages through genetic testings because of ethical consideration when destroying mummies' tissues.

Frank Rühli, director of the Institute of Evolutionary Medicine at the University of Zurich, and colleagues used a highly hereditable character, body height, to look for evidence of incest in 259 mummies of both commoners and royals.

"It is actually one of the largest collections of body height of ancient Egyptians and spans all major periods of their history," Rühli told Discovery News.

The researchers tested the hypothesis of royal incest by studying variation (difference between individuals) of body heights of royals and comparing it with variations among commoners.

"Pharaohs varied less in height than men of the common population. This is one indicator of inbreeding," Rühli said.

Detailing their results in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Rühli and colleagues noted that the pharaohs were taller than non-royal males from the same time period, while there was little difference between the stature of queens and common Egyptian women.

Was King Senebkay killed in battle?

Injuries to pharaoh's bones suggest he was brutally hacked with axes while riding his horse

By Sarah Griffiths for MailOnline

The 3,650-year old skeleton of King Senebkay has revealed the pharaoh died a violent death. Senebkay lived at a time when rulers battled for power before the rise of Egypt’s New Kingdom in 1,550 BC and his skeleton shows 18 injuries caused by axes. Injuries to his skull, lower back and ankles, suggest he was attacked while on his horse and hacked at with the deadly weapon - dying from blows to the head.

The tomb of Senebkay was unearthed at the Abydos archaeological site, near the city of Sohag, Egypt last year and was identified by an inscription on the wall of this burial chamber. It was the first time that any trace of the pharaoh was found, who was only previously known about by fragments of his name on an ancient list of Egyptian rulers.

Now, archaeologists from the University of Pennsylvania, who came across the tomb, have revealed how the pharaoh probably died. Injuries to the skull, as well as vertical cuts on the ankles, feet and lower back, suggest the king was killed in a battle and was aged between 35 and 49 when he died, Luxor Times Magazine reported. Josef Wegner of the university, who led the dig, said the injuries suggest that the king died a violent death.

He was a ruler of Abydos for just four and a half years, at a time when dominant families battled for control of land. The angle and direction of the lacerations show he must have been higher up than his attackers when they cut him with axes.
It is likely that the king was on horseback and blows to his back and legs caused him to fall to the ground, where his enemies brutally struck his head until he died, far from his home.

Searching for Sesostris

A new French exhibition presents what is known about the ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Sesostris III, writes David Tresilian in Paris

Not as famous as his New Kingdom successors Ramses II or Tutankhamun, and not responsible for the kind of grand building projects that immortalised his Old Kingdom predecessors Khufu and Khafre, builders of the largest of the Great Pyramids at Giza, the ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Sesostris III was nevertheless one of the country’s most important rulers, becoming a kind of symbolic embodiment of ancient Egyptian kingship.

However, until recently it has been difficult to disentangle fact from fiction in inherited accounts of the pharaoh’s accomplishments, with modern historians tending to see the list of achievements attributed to Sesostris III by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus, for example, as either invented or a composite of actions taken by many different rulers.

According to Herodotus, writing in the long second book of his Histories dedicated to ancient Egypt, Sesostris, an unusually war-like ruler, sailed down the Arabian Gulf with a fleet of warships, subduing coastal tribes as he did so. Later, he led campaigns in Asia, defeating the Scythians, and even led Egyptian armies into southern Europe, defeating sundry armies in Thrace.

“It is a fact,” Herodotus writes, “that the Colchians are of Egyptian descent,” indicating that Sesostris and his armies reached the far side of the Black Sea. “I noticed this myself before I heard anyone else mention it… and found that the Colchians remembered the Egyptians more distinctly than the Egyptians remembered them.”

When the Greeks Ruled Egypt

By James Romm

The Ptolemies who ruled Egypt for nearly three centuries, from about 320 to 31 BCE, had a difficult dual part to play: that of Hellenistic monarchs, in the mold of Alexander the Great, and, simultaneously, Egyptian pharaohs. The founding father of their line, Ptolemy I Soter (“Savior”), a Macedonian general in Alexander’s army of conquest, secured rule over Egypt amid the confusion following his king’s death, crowned himself monarch in 306 BCE. But he bequeathed to his heirs—the fourteen other Ptolemies who would succeed him, not to mention several Cleopatras—a difficult demographic and geopolitical position. The Ptolemies’ palace complex, staffed by a European elite, stood in Alexandria, one of the world’s original Green Zones, a Greek-style city founded on a strongly fortified isthmus facing the Mediterranean. To the south, nearly cut off by the vast marshes of Lake Mareotis, lived most of their Egyptian subjects. Some scholars have reckoned the country’s ratio of Egyptians to Greco-Macedonians at ten to one.

The strategies by which the Ptolemies maintained power in this complex environment are vividly illustrated in “When the Greeks Ruled Egypt: From Alexander the Great to Cleopatra,” an exhibition at NYU’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World through January 4. To wield sovereignty over both populations required ingenuity, adaptability, and, in the Ptolemies’ case, a willingness to adopt the customs of their Egyptian subjects. Their great hero and model, Alexander, had set the template for religious tolerance and cultural fusion, winning hearts and minds in 332 BCE with his participation in the cult of the Apis—an Egyptian deity, incarnated in a living bull, that had been mocked by other foreigners. The Ptolemies followed his lead, taking part in age-old pharaonic traditions even while preserving their European heritage. To suit their Egyptian subjects, they had their portrait busts carved out of native black basalt, adorned by the pharaonic nemes headddress and uraeus or rearing cobra circlet; to the Hellenes in Alexandria, they displayed their images in stark white marble, with curling locks bound only by the thin diadem that, ever since Alexander first wore it, signified enlightened Greek monarchy.

King Tut's Health: New Mummy Scans Refute Old Diagnosis of Pharaohs

by Stephanie Pappas, Live Science Contributor   |   October 21, 2014 

The royalty of ancient Egypt suffered from an age-related back disorder, according to a new body scan of the mummies of pharaohs.

The new research clears up a long-standing mummy misdiagnosis, which held that some rulers who lived between about 1492 B.C. and 1153 B.C. had a painful inflammatory disorder called ankylosing spondylitis. This disease would have fused their vertebrae together starting from an early age.

"We are now questioning the reality that ankylosing spondylitis is actually an ancient disease," said study researcher Sahar Saleem of the Kasr Al Ainy Faculty of Medicine in Cairo. Whether it is an ancient disease or not, the altered diagnosis suggests that famed pharaohs, including Ramesses the Great, did not live out their final years in great pain. Instead, their disorder was likely asymptomatic, Saleem told Live Science.

Pharaoh's backbone

The mummies of the 18th, 19th and 20th Dynasties of ancient Egypt are incredibly well-preserved. These were the gilded times of such rulers as the 18th-dynasty boy king Tutankhamun, whose ornate burial mask is a universal symbol of ancient Egypt, and the 19th-dynasty pharaoh Ramesses II, also called "the Great" because of his military success and soaring monuments.

UCLA Egyptologist gives new life to female pharaoh from 15th century B.C.

No usurper, Hatshepsut was just really good at her job, according to new biography

By Meg Sullivan | October 08, 2014

By the time of her death in 1458 B.C., Egypt’s Pharaoh Hatshepsut had presided over her kingdom’s most peaceful and prosperous period in generations. Yet by 25 years later, much of the evidence of her success had been erased or reassigned to her male forebears.

Even after 20th century archaeologists began to unearth traces of the woman who defied tradition to crown herself as king, Hatshepsut still didn’t get her due, a UCLA Egyptologist argues in a forthcoming book. 

“She’s been described as a usurper, and the obliteration of her contributions has been attributed to a backlash against what has been seen as her power-grabbing ways,” said Kara Cooney, the author of “The Woman Who Would Be King: Hatshepsut’s Rise to Power in Ancient Egypt.”

In the mainstream biography, due Oct. 14 from Crown Publishing, Cooney sets out to rehabilitate the reputation of the 18th dynasty ruler whom she considers to be “the most formidable and successful woman to ever rule in the Western ancient world.” To find a parallel, Cooney argues, one has to look to Empress Lü of third century B.C. China, Elizabeth I or Catherine the Great.

“Hatshepsut’s story needs to be carefully resurrected and her modus operandi needs to be dissected and analyzed in a more fair-minded way,” said Cooney, an associate professor of Near Eastern languages and culture in the UCLA College. “I see her as a person who created her position based on her ability to do the job rather than her desire for it.”

Origins of Hierarchy: How Egyptian Pharaohs Rose to Power

By Stephanie Pappas, Live Science Contributor   |   August 11, 2014

The rulers of ancient Egypt lived in glorious opulence, decorating themselves with gold and perfumes and taking their treasures with them to the grave.

But how could such a hierarchical, despotic system arise from egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies? The reasons were part technological and part geographical: In a world where agriculture was on the rise and the desert was all-encompassing, the cost of getting out from under the thumb of the pharaoh would have been too high.

"There was basically nowhere else to go," said study author Simon Powers, a postdoctoral researcher in ecology and evolution at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. "That cost of leaving could basically lock individuals into despotism."

From egalitarianism to hierarchy

Ancient Egypt is just one example of a society that transitioned from equality to hierarchy. During the Neolithic Period, often referred to as the Stone Age — which began about 10,000 years ago — agriculture began to replace hunting and gathering as the principal means for obtaining food. At the same time, societies in which everyone had been more or less equal began to schism into classes, with clear leaders emerging. In many cases, these leaders held absolute power.

Many researchers have theorized that agriculture allowed people to hoard food and resources, and that with this power, they could induce others to follow them. But no one had ever convincingly explained how the transition from no leaders to leaders could have occurred, Powers told Live Science. If everyone in hunter-gatherer societies was more or less equal in strength or resources to start, why would they allow an individual to dominate in the first place?

Did the pharaohs know hieroglyphics? - Polish Egyptologist explains

Could all the pharaohs read and write? Only 1-3 percent of the inhabitants of ancient Egypt mastered this exceptionally difficult art. Evidence of literacy of the rulers of Egypt are perhaps not numerous, but clear, argues Filip Taterka, Egyptologist, a doctoral student at the Institute of Prehistory, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań.

In ancient Egypt, there were several types of handwriting. Currently, the best known are classical hieroglyphics, carved in stone on the walls of temples and tombs.

"For administrative documents and literary texts, ancient Egiptians used mainly hieratic, which was a simplified form of writing used since the Old Kingdom, the time of the builders of the pyramids in the third millennium BC. In the middle of the first millennium BC, even more simplified demotic appeared" - explained Taterka.

As it turns out, Egyptian written sources tell us very little about the literacy of the kings of Egypt. Poznań scientist tried to trace the problem since the beginning of pharaonic civilization in Egyptian texts.

"Relatively late sources suggest that even one of the first rulers of Egypt - Aha - mastered the writing skill. He was believed to be an author of a few medical treaties, although the reliability of this report is, of course, debatable" - added Taterka.

According to the reasearcher, the oldest source directly referring to pharaonic literacy comes from the end of the Fifth Dynasty, the end of the 3d millennium BC. Royal dignitary Inti an inscription carved inside his tomb at Saqqara near the oldest pyramid in the world, which mentions receiving a letter personally written by Pharaoh Isesi. The researcher found numerous allusions to skills in writing by the rulers of the land of the Nile in the Texts of the Pyramids, the oldest religious inscriptions carved inside the 10 pyramids.

Roman Emperor Dressed As Egyptian Pharaoh in Newfound Carving

By Owen Jarus, Live Science Contributor   |   March 25, 2014

An ancient stone carving on the walls of an Egyptian temple depicts the Roman emperor Claudius dressed as an Egyptian pharaoh, wearing an elaborate crown, a team of researchers has discovered.

In the carving, Emperor Claudius, who reigned from A.D. 41 to 54, is shown erecting a giant pole with a lunar crescent at the top. Eight men, each wearing two feathers, are shown climbing the supporting poles, with their legs dangling in midair.

Egyptian hieroglyphs in the carving call Claudius the "Son of Ra, Lord of the Crowns," and say he is "King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Lord of the Two Lands." The hieroglyphs say he is raising the pole of the tent (or cult chapel) of Min (an ancient Egyptian god of fertility and power) and notes a date indicating a ritual like this took place around the summertime researchers say. It would have taken place even though Claudius never visited Egypt. A cult chapel is a place of worship and a tent could also be used for this purpose.

The elaborate crown on Claudius consists of three rushes (plants) set on ram horns with three falcons sitting on top. Three solar discs representing the sun (one for each plant) are shown in front of the rushes. Egyptian rulers are shown wearing crowns like this relatively late in ancient Egyptian history, mainly after 332 B.C., and they were worn only in Egypt. The Roman Empire took over Egypt in 30 B.C., and while the Roman emperors were not Egyptian, they were still depicted as pharaohs Egyptologists have noted.

What the new pharaoh tells us about ancient Egypt

By Nicola Harrington

Last month’s discovery in South Abydos, in Egypt – of the remains of the pharaoh, Senekbay, which date to the Second Intermediate Period (c. 1750-1550 BC) – sheds new light on a complex and divided period of Egyptian history.

The collapse of the Old Kingdom, the age of the great pyramid-builders, saw the dissolution of central government and the formation of independent states. The unprepossessing tomb of a provincial king named Senebkay not only supports Danish Egyptologist Kim Ryholt’s previously dismissed theory of an Abydos Dynasty, but changes the political landscape of Egypt during the turbulent Second Intermediate Period.

Senebkay’s times and the Abydos Dynasty

Senebkay, who lived around 1650 BC, was ruler of Middle Egypt, situated between kingdoms ruled from Avaris (Tell el-Daba in the Delta) and Thebes (modern Luxor).

Prior to the discovery of the Abydos South cemetery, the only established dynasties were those of the north (the 13th and 15th dynasties, Hyksos) and south (16th). These vied for power until the Theban king Ahmose pushed south and succeeded in reunifying the country at the beginning of what is known as the New Kingdom (1550-1075 BC).

It’s worth noting here that term “dynasty” is a modern artificial academic concept – a means of grouping Egyptian rulers chronologically. It would not have been recognised in the ancient world.

Akhenaten: mad, bad, or brilliant?

He fathered Tutankhamun, married Nefertiti, and was one of the most original thinkers of his era. Then why is the pharoah Akhenaten often dismissed as a madman?

By Alastair Sooke 09 Jan 2014

Almost 200 miles south of Cairo, in the heart of Middle Egypt, the archaeological site of Amarna occupies a great bay of desert beside the River Nile. To the uninformed eye, this semicircle of barren land, bound by the east bank of the river and enormous limestone cliffs, looks like nothing much: a vast, stricken dust bowl, approximately seven miles long and three miles wide, scattered with sandy hillocks. But 33 centuries ago, this spot was home to tens of thousands of ancient Egyptians, brought there by the will of a single man: the pharaoh Akhenaten.

Rebel, tyrant, and prophet of arguably the world’s earliest monotheistic religion, Akhenaten has been called history’s first individual. His impact upon ancient Egyptian customs and beliefs stretching back for centuries was so alarming that, in the generations following his death in 1336 BC, he was branded a heretic. Official king lists omitted his name.

For my money, this makes him the most fascinating and controversial figure in Egyptian history. And that’s before you consider his marriage to Nefertiti, known as the Mona Lisa of antiquity thanks to her austerely beautiful painted limestone bust discovered in a sculptor’s workshop at Amarna and now in the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, or the likelihood that he fathered Tutankhamun, the most famous pharaoh of them all. If I were in charge of the British Museum, I would commission an exhibition about Akhenaten in a trice.

Akhenaten was not supposed to become pharaoh. The son of Amenhotep III, who dominated the first half of the 14th century BC, ruling over a court of unprecedented luxury and magnificence that placed great emphasis on solar theology, Prince Amenhotep, as he was then called, was younger brother to the crown Prince Thutmose. Following Thutmose’s unexpected death, though, he became the heir apparent – and when his father died in 1353 BC, he took the throne as Amenhotep IV.

Akhenaten: Egyptian Pharaoh, Nefertiti's Husband, Tut's Father

By Owen Jarus, LiveScience Contributor   |   August 30, 2013

Akhenaten was a pharaoh of Egypt who reigned over the country for about 17 years between roughly 1353 B.C. and 1335 B.C.

A religious reformer he made the Aten, the sun disc, the center of Egypt’s religious life and carried out an iconoclasm that saw the names of Amun, a pre-eminent Egyptian god, and his consort Mut, be erased from monuments and documents throughout Egypt’s empire. 

When he ascended the throne his name was Amenhotep IV, but in his sixth year of rule he changed it to “Akhenaten” a name that the late Egyptologist Dominic Montserrat translated roughly as the “Benevolent one of (or for) the Aten.”

In honor of the Aten, he constructed an entirely new capital at an uninhabited place, which we now call Amarna, out in the desert. Its location was chosen so that its sunrise conveyed a symbolic meaning. “East of Amarna the sun rises in a break in the surrounding cliffs. In this landscape the sunrise could be literally ‘read’ as if it were the hieroglyph spelling Akhet-aten or ‘Horizon of the Aten’ — the name of the new city,” wrote Montserrat in his book "Akhenaten: History, Fantasy and Ancient Egypt" (Routledge, 2000).

He notes that this capital would quickly grow to become about 4.6 square miles (roughly 12 square kilometers) in size. After his death, the pharaoh’s religious reforms quickly collapsed, his new capital became abandoned and his successors denounced him.

Akhenaten, either before or shortly after he became pharaoh, would marry Nefertiti, who in some works of art is shown standing equal next to her husband. Some have even speculated that she may have become a co-, or even sole, ruler of Egypt. 

A Forgotten Female Pharaoh Comes to Life

by Margaret Regan

If Richard Wilkinson has his way, one day the Egyptian Queen Tausert will be as well-known as Nefertiti.

For the last six years, Wilkinson and the other archaeologists in his University of Arizona Egyptian expedition have been excavating Tausert’s mortuary temple in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings.

Unlike Nefertiti, who was the queen consort of the Pharaoh Akhenaten, Tausert was herself a pharaoh. It was extremely rare for a woman to rule in Ancient Egypt — only a handful reigned during the 4,000 years the civilization lasted — but Tausert was king in the 19th dynasty, around 1200 B.C. Knowledge of her largely disappeared after her death, and her story has long been buried in the Egyptian sands.

“We’re bringing the queen back,” Wilkinson says animatedly in his office in the UA Department of Classics. “It’s important we bring her back from oblivion. We’re bringing her back into history.”

Named a Regents’ professor in 2008, the renowned Egyptologist has been at the UA for 21 years, first in the former humanities program, then in classics, and now in the new School of Anthropology. He also has an affiliation with the Department of Near Eastern Studies.

Wilkinson is known as a charismatic teacher — his classics colleague and fellow Regents’ Professor David Soren calls him a Pied Piper — and ever since he arrived at the UA in 1989, he’s led his students on his excavations in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings. For more than two decades, he’s spent winter breaks and scorching summers digging in the valley, across the Nile River from Luxor, known as Thebes in ancient days.

Dynasties Of Egypt Part V: Late Period

Kushite Period, or Dynasty 25 (ca. 712–664 B.C.)

From ca. 728 to 656 B.C., the Nubian kings of Dynasty 25 dominated Egypt. Like the Libyans before them, they governed as Egyptian pharaohs. Their control was strongest in the south. In the north, Tefnakht's successor, Bakenrenef, ruled for four years (ca. 717–713 B.C.) at Sais until Piankhy's successor, Shabaqo (ca. 712–698 B.C.), overthrew him and established Nubian control over the entire country. The accession of Shabaqo can be considered the end of the Third Intermediate Period and the beginning of the Late Period in Egypt.

Nubian rule, which viewed itself as restoring the true traditions of Egypt, benefited Egypt economically and was accompanied by a revival in temple building and the arts that continued throughout the Late Period. At the same time, however, the country faced a growing threat from the Assyrian empire to its east. After forty years of relative security, Nubian control—and Egypt's peace—were broken by an Assyrian invasion in ca. 671 B.C. The current pharaoh, Taharqo (ca. 690–664 B.C.), retreated south and the Assyrians established a number of local vassals to rule in their stead in the Delta. One of them, Necho I of Sais (ca. 672–664 B.C.), is recognized as the founder of the separate Dynasty 26. For the next eight years, Egypt was the battleground between Nubia and Assyria. A brutal Assyrian invasion in 663 B.C. finally ended Nubian control of the country. The last pharaoh of Dynasty 25, Tanutamani (664–653 B.C.), retreated to Napata. There, in relative isolation, he and his descendants continued to rule Nubia, eventually becoming the Meroitic civilization, which flourished in Nubia until the fourth century A.D. 

Dynasties Of Egypt Part IV: New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period

The New Kingdom, sometimes referred to as the Egyptian Empire, is the period in ancient Egyptian history between the 16th century BC and the 11th century BC, covering the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Twentieth Dynasties of Egypt. 

The New Kingdom (1570–1070 BC) followed the Second Intermediate Period and was succeeded by the Third Intermediate Period. It was Egypt’s most prosperous time and marked the zenith of its power.

Possibly as a result of the foreign rule of the Hyksos during the Second Intermediate Period, the New Kingdom saw Egypt attempt to create a buffer between the Levant and Egypt, and attained its greatest territorial extent. It expanded far south into Nubia and held wide territories in the Near East. Egyptian armies fought Hittite armies for control of modern-day Syria.

The Eighteenth Dynasty contained some of Egypt's most famous pharaohs including Ahmose I, Hatshepsut, Thutmose III, Amunhotep III, Akhenaten and Tutankhamun.

The founder of the Eighteenth Dynasty, Ahmose I (reign 1550-1525 BC) had a turbulent childhood. At the age of seven, his father Seqenenre Tao II was killed, probably while putting down members of the Asiatic tribe known as Hyskos, who were rebelling against the Thebean Royal House in Lower Egypt. At the age of ten, he saw his brother Kamose die of unknown causes after reigning for only three years. 

Death of a pharaoh

The enigma surrounding a 3,000-year-old royal murder seems to have been solved.
Nevine El-Aref looks at the latest evidence

Forensic technology has recently been playing a major role in Egyptology. After centuries of ambiguity and mystery surrounding several chapters of ancient Egyptian history, modern science has finally cleared up many of the enigmas and provided a better understanding of some important episodes in this great civilisation.
Modern methods have recently succeeded in identifying several royal mummies, detailing their lineages and recognising the diseases from which they suffered in life as well as solving the paradoxes behind some mysterious deaths.

Among these achievements has been solving the enigma of the early death of the boy king Tutankhamun, including the symptoms that led to his demise in early manhood as well as the identity of the mummies of his two unborn children.

It also identified the mummy of the monotheistic Pharaoh Akhenaten, and proved that he was Tutankhamun’s father by a secondary wife.

The mummies of Queen Hatshepsut and Pharaoh Amenhotep II, the grandfather of Tutankhamun, have also been identified.

This week scientific researches, archaeological reviews, DNA analyses, CT images and forensic, anthropological and genetic studies have put an end to the long-debated mystery over the death of Pharaoh Ramses III, a conundrum that has perplexed Egyptologists ever since the discovery of the king’s mummy in the Deir Al-Bahari cachet in Luxor in 1886. The events recorded on the harem conspiracy papyrus now exhibited at the Turin Museum further deepened the mystery.

Dynasties of Egypt Part III: Middle Kingdom and Second Intermediate Period

The Middle Kingdom is the period in the history of ancient Egypt stretching from the establishment of the Eleventh Dynasty to the end of the Fourteenth Dynasty, between 2050 BC and 1652 BC.

The period comprises two phases, the Eleventh Dynasty, which ruled from Thebes, and the Twelfth Dynasty onwards, which was centered around el-Lisht. 

The Eleventh Dynasty of Ancient Egypt was a group of pharaohs whose earlier members are grouped with the four preceding dynasties to form the First Intermediate Period, while the later members from Mentuhotep II onwards are considered part of the Middle Kingdom. They all ruled from Thebes.

An inscription carved during the reign of Wahankh Intef II, the third pharaoh of the Eleventh Dynasty, says that he was the first of this dynasty to claim to rule over the whole of Egypt, a claim which brought the Thebans into conflict with the rulers of Herakleopolis Magna during the Tenth Dynasty. Intef undertook several campaigns northwards, and captured the important nome (regional governorship) of Abydos.

Warfare continued intermittently between the Thebans and the Herakleopolitans until the fourteenth year of Nebhetepra Mentuhotep II, when the Herakleopolitans were defeated, and the Theban dynasty began to consolidate their rule. Mentuhotep II commanded military campaigns south into Nubia, which had gained its independence during the First Intermediate Period. Some type of military action took place against Palestine, after which the pharaoh reorganized the country and placed a vizier (high government official) at the head of civil administration for the country.

Abydos: Life and Death at the Dawn of Egyptian Civilization

by John Galvin

Evidence shows that human sacrifice helped populate the royal city of the dead.

King Aha, "The Fighter," was not killed while unifying the Nile's two warring kingdoms, nor while building the capital of Memphis. No, one legend has it that the first ruler of a united Egypt was killed in a hunting accident after a reign of 62 years, unceremoniously trampled to death by a rampaging hippopotamus. News of his demise brought a separate, special terror to his staff. For many, the honor of serving the king in life would lead to the more dubious distinction of serving the king in death.
 
On the day of Aha's burial a solemn procession made its way through the sacred precincts of Abydos, royal necropolis of Egypt's first kings. Led by priests in flowing white gowns, the funeral retinue included the royal family, vizier, treasurer, administrators, trade and tax officers, and Aha's successor, Djer. Just beyond the town's gates the procession stopped at a monumental structure with imposing brick walls surrounding an open plaza. Inside the walls the priests waded through a cloud of incense to a small chapel, where they performed cryptic rites to seal Aha's immortality.
 
Outside, situated around the enclosure's walls, were six open graves. In a final act of devotion, or coercion, six people were poisoned and buried along with wine and food to take into the afterlife. One was a child of just four or five, perhaps the king's beloved son or daughter, who was expensively furnished with ivory bracelets and tiny lapis beads.
 
The procession then walked westward into the setting sun, crossing sand dunes and moving up a dry riverbed to a remote cemetery at the base of a high desert plateau. Here Aha's three-chambered tomb was stockpiled with provisions for a lavish life in eternity. There were large cuts of ox meat, freshly killed waterbirds, loaves of bread, cheese, dried figs, jars of beer, and dozens of wine vessels, each bearing Aha's official seal. Beside his tomb more than 30 graves were laid out in three neat rows. As the ceremony climaxed, several lions were slain and placed in a separate burial pit. As Aha's body was lowered into a brick-lined burial chamber, a select group of loyal courtiers and servants also took poison and joined their king in the next world.
 

Tutankhamun's death and the birth of monotheism

05 September 2012 by Jessica Hamzelou

TUTANKHAMUN'S mysterious death as a teenager may finally have been explained. And the condition that cut short his life may also have triggered the earliest monotheistic religion, suggests a new review of his family history.

Since his lavishly furnished, nearly intact tomb was discovered in 1922, the cause of Tutankhamun's death has been at the centre of intense debate. There have been theories of murder, leprosy, tuberculosis, malaria, sickle-cell anaemia, a snake bite - even the suggestion that the young king died after a fall from his chariot.

But all of these theories have missed one vital point, says Hutan Ashrafian, a surgeon with an interest in medical history at Imperial College London. Tutankhamun died young with a feminised physique, and so did his immediate predecessors.

Paintings and sculptures show that Smenkhkare, an enigmatic pharaoh who may have been Tutankhamun's uncle or older brother, and Akhenaten, thought to have been the boy king's father, both had feminised figures, with unusually large breasts and wide hips. Two pharaohs that came before Akhenaten - Amenhotep III and Tuthmosis IV - seem to have had similar physiques. All of these kings died young and mysteriously, says Ashrafian. "There are so many theories, but they've focused on each pharaoh individually."

Ashrafian found that each pharaoh died at a slightly younger age than his predecessor, which suggests an inherited disorder, he says. Historical accounts associated with the individuals hint at what that disorder may have been.

"It's significant that two [of the five related pharaohs] had stories of religious visions associated with them," says Ashrafian. People with a form of epilepsy in which seizures begin in the brain's temporal lobe are known to experience hallucinations and religious visions, particularly after exposure to sunlight. It's likely that the family of pharaohs had a heritable form of temporal lobe epilepsy, he says.