Tag: Egypt

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Fish in Egypt – a staple food or forbidden fruit?

One of the most famous quotes about Ancient Egypt comes from Herodotus. He states that Egypt is “a gift of the Nile.” He explains the reasons for this statement, among which he mentions easy access to fish. It seems, therefore, that fish should have been an important part of the ancient Egyptians’ diet. However, this contradicts references by other ancient authors who mention the existence of a taboo on eating fish in Egypt. So did the Egyptians eat fish?

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Cleopatra VII – The Queen of Strategy: The Political Game for the Crown of Egypt

In the history of Ancient Egypt, Cleopatra VII Philopator holds a special place. Not only as the last ruler of the Hellenistic Ptolemaic dynasty, but also as a vital political actor who, in the turbulent final years of Egypt’s independence, skillfully leveraged her assets in the struggle for power against the most powerful empire of the time: Rome.

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Unpublished documents from Pathyris – the demotic Gebelein temple archive

The Ptolemaic Pathyris Project, funded by the National Science Centre (Polonez Bis 2 program, grant no. 2022/45/P/HS3/01807) and hosted by the Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures of the Polish Academy of Sciences, aims to reconstruct the urban layout and domestic architecture of Pathyris, a town located approximately 30 km southwest of Luxor in the Gebelein micro-region, using archival, papyrological, and geospatial data.

The site has yielded a vast collection of Greek and Demotic (an ancient Egyptian script used between the 7th century BCE and the 5th century CE) papyri, ostraca, and wooden tablets. To date, around 1,300 documents have been published, and many of the family archives have been extensively studied, providing a unique glimpse into various socio-economic aspects of Ptolemaic society

The lecture by Professor Quack, originally scheduled for February 18, 2025, has been postponed to April 2, 2025, at 1:00 PM.
Place: Maria Skłodowska-Curie Hall (1st floor), Staszic Palace, Nowy Świat 72, 00-330, and online.[Wykł

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Ptolemaic Pathyris: Research on an Ancient Egyptian Town

Ptolemaic Pathyris is known for its rich collection of papyri and ostraca, which survive in excellent condition, buried in the ruins of the city. Thousands of texts, describing the everyday life of the ancient Egyptians and belonging to the archives of the local temple and notary’s office, but above all to the archives of the ordinary families living in the town, were discovered here in the late 19th and throughout the 20th centuries. A businesswoman, an inheritance dispute, or an unexplained murder — this is only the beginning of the story.

Although the archaeology of Ancient Egypt is dominated by studies of tombs, temples, and the realm of the elite, The Ptolemaic Pathyris Project wants to change this by showing how much we can learn about ordinary people and their everyday lives.

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‘Poles on the Nile: Polish archaeology in Egypt and Sudan

The ‘Poles on the Nile’ is an event with quite a long tradition. The first conference meeting was held in 2007 and since then, scholars conducting archaeological research in Egypt and Sudan have been meeting annually, always in June, at the University of Warsaw. The conference is attended by archaeologists, as well as specialists in other fields, who work with archaeologists, from the major national universities and research institutes based in Warsaw, Krakow, Poznan, Wroclaw and Gdansk, and abroad.

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Polish computer application in archaeology

From April 2nd to April 6th, 2023, the 50th International Conference on Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology was held in Amsterdam. Polish archaeology was represented by a strong interdisciplinary group, which prepared two sessions and presented 10 presentations and 2 posters.

Photogrammetric model of a barrow during excavation with markings showing the location of various monuments
by J. Stępnik

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The mummy with a pickled fetus: another example of wishful thinking

In the spring of last year, the media around the world circulated sensational information about the discovery of a fetus in a female mummy held at the National Museum in Warsaw. The authors of this discovery, from the Warsaw Mummy Project team, found that the woman died in the 26th–30th gestational week, i.e. at the beginning of the third trimester, and the fetus was not pulled out during embalming – contrary to the treatment of the viscera of the female, which were removed through an incision in the lower part of the abdomen. They also observed that the mummified fetus had broken bones (not shown on the published radiograph) and was found in two parts, which was interpreted as the result of the postmortem fracture of the female pelvis.

Typical ancient Egyptian mummification process drawing by SimplisticReps, published on licence CC BY-ND 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Typical ancient Egyptian mummification process;
drawing by SimplisticReps, published on licence CC BY-ND 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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Bioarchaeology of the Near East: volume 15 is now available online

The recent volume of Bioarchaeology of the Near East contains three regular papers and eight short fieldwork reports, with a broad range of topics. Nina Maaranen and colleagues from the ERC Hyksos Enigma project present research on dental non-metric traits at Avaris, the Hyksos capital city, compared to other samples from Egypt. Their results indicate that the people of Avaris were of different ancestry than Egyptians, supporting the hypothesis that a large-scale migration from the Levant to the eastern Nile delta occurred during the Second Intermediate Period.

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Bioarchaeology of the Near East – volume 14 is now available

After a few months of pandemic delay, the new volume of Bioarchaeology of the Near East has been issued online. This time, there are four regular papers and five short fieldwork reports, as well as the obituaries of Holger Schutkowski and Alina Wiercińska, two longtime members of the journal’s Editorial Board who passed away in the last two years.

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