Ancient Egypt
11 findings, grouped by tradition.
Egyptian6
- AnkhThe sandal-strap origin often credited to Gardiner was, in his own 1915 article, 'first enunciated' by Battiscombe Gunn. Gunn's evidence was pairs of the object painted at the feet of Middle Kingdom coffins.
- The Egyptian Book of the Dead"Book of the Dead" is Lepsius's 1842 title and his spell numbering; Egyptians said going forth by day, and fixed the spells' order only in the Saite period.
- The Pyramid TextsFrom Breasted in 1912 the move from Pyramid to Coffin Texts was read as the afterlife democratised. Mark Smith (2009) concluded it never happened; Hays (2011) found it rested on negative evidence.
- Heka and the Opening of the MouthThe forked pesesh-kef blade of the Opening of the Mouth was, Ann Macy Roth argued in 1992, a knife for cutting a newborn's umbilical cord. The rite's earliest form, in the Pyramid Texts of Unas, re-enacts birth and infancy.
- The Great SphinxHoremakhet is a New Kingdom name, unknown before the 18th Dynasty. Christiane Zivie (1976) called it a tradition invented for an already ancient statue, Mark Lehner noted (1991).
- The Dendera ZodiacChampollion called it Roman in 1822, reading 'autocrator' in a cartouche on an engraving of the adjoining relief. At Dendera in 1828 he found every rooftop cartouche empty. Planet positions now date its design to June–August 50 BCE.
Greco-Egyptian2
- The Theban Magical LibraryNo excavation lies behind it: ten papyri are linked by dealers' word, Anastasi's sales and shared hands. In 2016 Korshi Dosoo argued they need not have had one owner.
- Apuleius and the Initiation of LuciusIn 11.27 the great god tells his priest to expect 'a man of Madauros', and a poor one. Lucius had claimed Greek descent in Book 1; Madauros in Africa was Apuleius's own town, so here the narrator becomes the author.
Ancient Egypt1
Egyptian Revival1
Graeco-Egyptian Magic1