Nile Magazine

Issue 38 is out now! Check it out at www.nilemagazine.com.au Nile is the world's premier print magazine dedicated to your passion for ancient Egypt.

You'll find that NILE is different. It is smart, punchy and pops with fabulous, high-quality, colour photographs! If you love ancient Egypt then you'll love every bi-monthly issue of NILE Magazine. www.nilemagazine.co.uk

04/01/2025

Ancient Egypt's most famous goddess.

This is the goddess Isis, gracing the foot of King Tutankhamun's gilded coffin.

Long after Egypt's other gods had faded into obscurity, Isis was still worshipped far beyond Egypt's borders, throughout the Mediterranean, well into the 6th century A.D.

Temples to Isis were built in Iraq, Greece and Rome, with a well preserved example discovered in Pompeii, originally constructed during the reign of Emperor Augustus.

We first meet Isis in the Old Kingdom's Pyramid Texts as the sister-wife of Osiris. The legend develops that she discovered and reunited the pieces of her husband's body, murdered by Seth, and through her magical powers, brought him back to life.'

This, together with the lengths that she went to in protecting their son, Horus, saw Isis revered as the ideal loyal wife and devoted mother.

Isis is normally depicted as a woman wearing a figure-hugging dress, with her name hieroglyph on her head. Here she kneels at the base of the foot of the middle coffin of Tutankhamun, her wings spread in protection.

Isis is also often portrayed as a mourning widow by Osiris' body, whom she magically revived as a mummy so as to conceive their son, Horus. This is why the goddess is often pictured at the feet of coffins, as all kings become Osiris in death. Isis' presence provides powerful restorative magic that helps in the king's resurrection in the afterlife.

Photo: Sandro Vannini.

30/12/2024

What else do you need for a purrfect 2025?

25/12/2024

And a very Merry Christmas to you!

16/12/2024

Inside the latest issue of Nile Magazine: your best look inside the newly-opened Grand Egyptian Museum.

This is the stunning view from the top. Visitors who conquer the entire length of the Grand Staircase are rewarded with this amazing view across to the Giza plateau’s Great Pyramids. The pyramid of Khafre takes centre stage.

04/12/2024

In the latest issue of Nile Magazine. Your first good look inside the new Grand Egyptian Museum.

This kneeling statue of the female pharaoh Hatshepsut was unearthed on the upper court of her memorial temple at Deir el-Bahri. It likely originally positioned before a statue of Amun-Re. She intended herself to be shown as forever worshipping the god and, in turn, eternally receive their divine blessings.

Because the office of pharaoh was traditionally a male one, Hatshepsut is often shown with a muscled male body and false beard to convey her royal authority.

Photo © Ildi Budai.

01/12/2024

Inside the current issue of Nile Magazine:

It has been more than 200 years since anyone has looked upon the pristine artwork in Seti I’s tomb in the same way that its discoverer did in 1817.

Factum Foundation - who specialise in creating facsimiles of historic works threatened by time and tourism - recreated the tomb’s Hall of Beauties for a 2017 exhibition at the Antikenmuseum in Basel, Switzerland.

The facsimile allowed visitors to view the tomb’s colours in the same light that the original artists did when they created it some 3,300 years ago.

Photo: © Oak Taylor-Smith | Factum Foundation

20/10/2024

Ramesses III's choice of stone saved his great temple!

The royal worship temple of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu is a true delight. It survives on the west bank at Luxor to a much greater degree than any other royal temple, giving you a real sense of the stately complex that has stood here for over 3,000 years.

Thankfully, Ramesses III chose to build his "House of Millions of Years" out of sandstone, which largely avoided the destructive attention which impacted other royal monuments created in fine limestone.

This photo of the temple's First Pylon is courtesy of M. R. Theklan.

On either side of the central doorway are two large recesses which once held tall wooden flagstaffs, estimated to have reached skyward up to 36 metres. Carved beside each recess was an inscription dedicating the flagstaff to a goddess: Nekhbet, Wadjet, Isis and Nephthys.

One of these dedications reads, ". . . . He made (as) a monument for his father Amun-Re, King of the Gods, erecting for him the flagpole Nekhbet of cedar of the (Lebanon) range, its tip of genuine fine gold."

The sight of these tall cedar flagpoles—coloured pennants fluttering from the top—must have been stunning.

09/10/2024

A stunning mummy mask.

The man who wore it into eternity clearly had the means to ensure that he arrived in good shape - fully awake, renewed, and looking fantastic.

This mask was designed to be a better, more perfect picture of the mummy beneath. And who wouldn't make the most of the opportunity for a little makeover for posterity?

The man's high status is also highlighted by the mask's striking eyes; inlaid with stone whites and obsidian pupils. The eyebrows were inlaid as well, but the stone has gone missing over the centuries, leaving only the recesses in the wood.

Under the chin is a small groove where a false beard was once attached, associating the deceased with Osiris, god of the Underworld. It would have been the man's hope to share in the god's resurrection.This mask caught the eye of the renowned pioneering female explorer, Lady Jane Franklin, who bought it during a journey down the Nile in 1834.

Based on stylistic grounds, this mask is dated to the New Kingdom's 18th Dynasty (ca. 1550–1295 B.C.).

07/10/2024

The goddess Hathor welcomes Seti I.

Jean-François Champollion gave us much: the keys to understanding the ancient Egyptian language, and the opening up 3,000 years of Egyptian history.

On his 1828 visit to Egypt, he took a few things as well.

The largest tomb in the Valley of the Kings is KV17, the tomb of King Seti I, father of Ramesses II (the Great). It had been discovered just 11 years earlier by Giovanni Belzoni who described it as 'a new and perfect monument of Egyptian antiquity, which can be recorded as superior to any other in point of grandeur, style, and preservation, appearing as if just finished on the day we entered it.'

Seti, of course, wasn't there; he had been rewrapped and reburied for safekeeping in the royal cache over the ridge at Deir el-Bahri, in tomb DB320. His empty tomb made international headlines anyway; the passages and chambers were filled with brightly-coloured decorations, largely in pristine condition.

So brilliant was the painting that Champollion was compelled to remove a section for the Egyptian collection at the Louvre. His motives were partly honourable; the year following Belzoni's opening of the tomb, flood waters poured in, damaging the fragile reliefs. This panel was already damaged when Champollion first saw it. It is likely that he felt that he was rescuing the scene from further flood damage, vandals, or thieves.

In the relief, the goddess Hathor welcomes the king into the underworld: She takes his hand (out of frame) and holds out her menat necklace as a symbol of her protection.

In the New Kingdom, Thebes was the capital of Egypt during the New Kingdom, and Hathor, Lady of the West (the underworld) played an important role in the necropolis area, welcoming the dead and accompanying them into the afterlife.

The goddess's wig features the horns of a cow (her sacred animal) and a solar disc (she is the daughter of Ra).

Today the restored relief stands in the Louvre, Paris (Cat. No. B7).

06/10/2024

This is not the pyramid I ordered.

Was the Bent Pyramid at Dahshur a massive blunder? Could it have been intentional?

With the abrupt bend halfway up, perhaps because of the awkwardly steep angle it was taking, the Bent Pyramid is often seen as something novel.

Built on the command of King Sneferu, around 2,600 B.C., the king had his workers finish it off with a gentler slope and, seemingly having learned a lesson, commissioned another massive pyramid nearby—the Red Pyramid; the world’s first colossal true, smooth-sided pyramid.

The theory is that the Bent Pyramid began as a smaller, but much steeper structure, climbing with a slope of 60°. Because the firmness of the ground beneath the pyramid was overestimated, at about 38 metres up the pyramid began to settle, with cracks appearing in the casing. At this point, a supporting girdle was added to the bottom courses resulting in a change of slope from 60° to 54°. It didn't work. The problems with subsidence continued, and the king's engineers took a final, drastic step by creating the 'bend'—lowering the angle for the top half to 43°.

It seems plausible, but would the engineers really have been that short-sighted at the beginning to attempt a pyramid with a 60° slope? Could the Bent Pyramid have been exactly what the king ordered?

It's likely that Sneferu was buried in the nearby Red Pyramid, but the Bent Pyramid mustn’t have been viewed as a total failure; long after the king’s death, he was still being worshipped at the Bent Pyramid, and not the aesthetically perfect Red Pyramid.

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