As the soldiers were shoring the foundations of the fort at Rosetta they came upon ancient blocks inscribed with hieroglyphs. One, a large stone, bore the same inscription written in ancient Egyptian and Greek. They felt they had stumbled upon something very important. The British took the Rosetta Stone back to England where it can still be seen in the British Museum. Twenty years later the French scholar Champollion cracked the code and read Egyptian hieroglyphs for the first time in two thousand years. ibid.
19th July 1799, Rosetta, Egypt: There were three inscriptions on the stone: mysterious ancient hieroglyphs at the top, then another unknown text, then at the bottom unknown Greek. This was a unique find. Egypt: The Mystery of the Rosetta Stone, BBC 2005
Along with his soldiers Napoleon had taken an army of scholars to unravel Egypt’s ancient culture. ibid.
Far away in the provinces a child prodigy Jean Francois Champollion was growing up ... By the time he was 13 Champollion spoke six ancient tongues. ibid.
But Champollion had taken an important step. He had worked out a hypothetical alphabet and by using it to write a cartouche for Cleopatra he now had evidence that the alphabet was correct. He had done this not just by logical deduction but by using the languages of Coptic and common Egyptian to work out the precise sounds of each hieroglyph. ibid.
Champollion’s revelation happened in the Autumn of 1822, 24 years after the stone had been discovered. ibid.
Egypt: a land of hidden treasures, buried secrets and spectacular finds. Of all the Egyptian pharaohs one name towers above the others: Ramesses II. New discoveries are adding to our pictures of this extraordinary king. Warrior. Builder. Lover. God. He was depicted as a superman but who was he? And did he really deserve to be called Ramesses the Great? Ramesses the Great
He inherited a large prosperous empire: it stretched from deep in the African desert right up to the Mediterranean Sea and the Middle East. ibid.
Amongst the biggest ever created in ancient Egypt, Ramesses’ grain stores were the powerhouses of his ceaseless building programme. ibid.
It covers over sixty thousand square feet and consists of a hundred and thirty-four columns in sixteen rows; most of them are fifty feet high. The twelve central columns stand an incredible eighty feet tall. The Hall is one of the greatest achievements of ancient Egyptian engineering. ibid.
By the end of 13th century B.C. Ramesses the Great had been on the throne for well over sixty years. He had defended his vast empire, built magnificent temples, and elevated himself to the status of living god. ibid.
Over seven decades Ramesses had re-modelled Egypt and redefined the office of the pharaoh. The rulers that followed his reign became the blueprint for kingship. ibid.
Is it possible that Akhenaten might have been an extraterrestrial hybrid? Giorgio A Tsoukalos, Legendary Times magazine
This is Frankenstein. This is science fiction stuff. Yet in ancient Egypt we have the exact same descriptions, the exact same depictions, of some very bizarre hybridisation programme which took place thousands of years ago. Giorgio A Tsoukalos
The Egyptian pharaoh occupied an unusual position: he was in effect an intermediary between Man and God. And by virtue of that, by the time of the nineteenth dynasty he was seen to be both human and divine. He was referred to as the living Horus. The god who is most closely associated with Egyptian kingship. Dr Kent Weeks, American University of Cairo
Queen Hatshepsut ruled over three thousand years ago as a female pharaoh. She created some of the most iconic architecture in ancient Egypt. And brought wealth and prosperity to the country. But when she died she was erased from history and her body vanished from its tomb. Egypt’s Lost Queen 1/2
When her beloved father dies it’s her half-brother Thutmose II who inherits the throne. ibid.
She has taken advantage of the youth of her stepson Thutmose III and seized power for herself. ibid.
The Spanish team has found compelling evidence that the Queen and her architect may have had more than just a working relationship. Egypt’s Lost Queen 2/2
Of all the enemies she might have feared, historians always felt there was one most likely suspect: her stepson Thutmose III. ibid.
At the end of a long search the mummy known as ‘the strong one’ is identified: Queen Hatshepsut. The proof is in the tooth. ibid.
She is the first pharaoh found and identified in nearly a century. The first since Tutankhamun. ibid.
In 31 B.C. the once magnificent Egyptian empire was about to fall into the hands of one of the most feared and ruthless warriors of the ancient world – the Romans. Queen Cleopatra – the last of the great pharaohs of Egypt – had been betrayed by treachery, her country devastated by civil war and famine. When the Romans took over the land of the Nile they turned one of the most inhospitable places on the planet into a thriving centre of trade. When Rome Ruled Egypt, 2008
The Romans wanted all the treasures of Egypt for themselves. ibid.
Dwarfs were held in high esteem by the pharaohs. ibid.
The Romans brought their superior engineering skills to bear. ibid.
To ensure a constant water supply they had to dig deep. ibid.
No-one knows exactly how many emeralds were mined here. But it must have been millions. The mountain is honeycombed with thousands of mine-shafts. ibid.
So for over five-hundred years the Roman merchants ... grew rich, and the Roman empire grew rich because everyone and everything in the empire had its price. Price paid in tariffs, taxes and tolls. ibid.
A journey across the eastern desert took anything up to two weeks depending on the size of the convoys. The convoys followed a well-established route. ibid.
Five thousand years ago, long before the time of Tutankhamun, before Ramesses, before Queen Nefertiti, the first great civilisation was established in Egypt. The Egyptian old kingdom’s lasting legacy is the Sphinx and the Great Pyramids at Giza. Ancient Apocalypse: Death on the Nile, BBC 2001
The pharaohs united Egypt and the old kingdom flourished. They developed a unique style of art, archaeology and literature. ibid.
4,200 years ago the old kingdom suddenly collapsed ... Egypt was plunged into a dark age which lasted for more than 100 years. ibid.
Fekri [Hassan] found evidence of something more devastating than political unrest ... The hieroglyphs tell of horrendous famines and the suffering of ordinary people. ibid.
The Nile flood was only a metre or two below average; hearing that the country was so debilitated, Napoleon seized the initiative and conquered Egypt. ibid.
Could the change from grass to desert be the cause of the sudden breakdown of the old kingdom? ibid.
Rapid climate change was the culprit Fekri had been searching for. ibid.
Severe climate change was causing widespread human misery 4,200 years ago. ibid.
Every year in late summer the flood waters roared down from the first cataract here and inundated the valley on either side, covering the land with this thick black silt – very fertile. Alastair Sooke, Treasures of Ancient Egypt I, BBC 2014
The Naqada pots were discovered in graves near the riverbank. ibid.
Artists excelled in portraying animals in a range of different materials. ibid.
Ancient Egypt has obsessed the imagination of the West. Alastair Sooke, Treasures of Ancient Egypt II
Amenhotep IV instigated one of the greatest revolutions in the history of Egypt: he swept away Egypt’s religion, abandoned thousands of traditional gods, and instead pledged allegiance to the one and only sun-god. ibid.
I’ve been tracking down 30 treasures that deserve to be celebrated not as antiquities but also as genuine masterpieces of art. Alastair Sooke, Treasures of Ancient Egypt III
The great temple Abu Simbel: it’s art that tries in a weird way to beat you up. ibid.
One of the most powerful pharaohs in history – King Akhenaten ... Akhenaten set out to build his personal paradise. Akhenaten founded a completely new religion – his cult was dedicated to the worship of the solar disc and to the king himself. At his side Queen Nefertiti. Akhenaten & Nefertiti – The Royal Gods of Egypt, Discovery History 2014
One of the greatest political reversals in Egyptian history. ibid.