Egypt travel guide
The pharaohs, gods, monuments and ideas of ancient Egypt, explained for travellers.
History & EgyptologyEgypt was where the Anzacs first came together: the first Australian and New Zealand contingents trained at Mena Camp beneath the Giza pyramids and at…
History & EgyptologyAustralia has a small but respected place in Egyptology. Macquarie University's Australian Centre for Egyptology, founded by Professor Naguib Kanawati…
History & EgyptologyThe largest ancient Egyptian collection in Australia is the University of Sydney's, founded by Sir Charles Nicholson and now shown at the Chau Chak…
History & EgyptologyThe ancient Egyptians worshipped hundreds of gods over some 3,000 years, from the sun god Ra and the state god Amun to Osiris, ruler of the dead, and…
History & EgyptologyRa was the ancient Egyptian sun god, believed to have created the world and to sail across the sky by day and through the underworld by night. Usually…
History & EgyptologyOsiris was the Egyptian god of the dead, rebirth and the fertile Nile: a murdered king who rose again to rule the underworld and judge every soul. He…
History & EgyptologyIsis was the Egyptian goddess of magic, motherhood and protection, wife of Osiris and mother of Horus, who restored her murdered husband and hid her…
History & EgyptologyHorus was the falcon-headed Egyptian god of the sky and kingship, and every living pharaoh was considered his earthly form. As the son of Isis and…
History & EgyptologyAnubis was the jackal-headed Egyptian god of embalming and cemeteries, who protected the dead, prepared their bodies and led them to judgement; he was…
History & EgyptologyHathor was the Egyptian goddess of love, music, dance, joy and motherhood, shown as a cow, a woman with cow horns and a sun disc, or a face with cow’s…
History & EgyptologyAmun was the god of Thebes, modern Luxor, whose name means “the hidden one”. Merged with the sun god as Amun-Ra, he became king of the gods and the…
History & EgyptologyThoth was the Egyptian god of writing, knowledge, the moon and the reckoning of time, shown as an ibis-headed man or a baboon. Scribe of the gods, he…
History & EgyptologySobek was the ancient Egyptian crocodile god, a power of the Nile, fertility and royal strength, shown as a crocodile or a man with a crocodile's…
History & EgyptologyBastet was an ancient Egyptian goddess of protection, motherhood and joy, first shown as a lioness and, from about 1000 BC, mostly as a cat or a…
History & EgyptologySeth (also spelled Set) was the Egyptian god of the desert, storms, foreign lands and violent strength, best known for murdering his brother Osiris…
History & EgyptologyPtah was the chief god of Memphis, Egypt's ancient capital, worshipped as the creator who brought the world into being by thought and speech and as…
History & EgyptologyMa'at was both a goddess and the central idea of Egyptian civilisation: truth, justice and the right order of the universe, the opposite of chaos…
History & EgyptologyKhnum was the ram-headed Egyptian god who shaped each human being and their ka on a potter's wheel and who was believed to release the Nile flood from…
History & EgyptologyThe Aten was the disc of the sun, a minor aspect of the sun god until the pharaoh Akhenaten (about 1353–1336 BC) made it the sole focus of state…
History & EgyptologyBes and Taweret were the protective gods of everyday Egyptian life: Bes a grimacing, lion-maned dwarf who scared away evil with music and knives,…
History & EgyptologyEgyptian hieroglyphs were a script of roughly 700 to 1,000 picture-signs in classical use that recorded the Egyptian language for about 3,600 years,…
History & EgyptologyMummification was the ancient Egyptian method of preserving a body so the spirit could recognise and return to it in the afterlife. For the elite, the…
History & EgyptologyThe pyramids were built by organised crews of Egyptian workers, fed and housed by the state, using copper tools, stone pounders, wooden sledges and…
History & EgyptologyPharaonic Egypt lasted about 3,000 years, from the unification of the country around 3000 BC to the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC. Egyptologists…
History & EgyptologyThe Rosetta Stone is a broken granodiorite slab inscribed in 196 BC with a priestly decree honouring the young King Ptolemy V, written three times: in…
History & EgyptologyThe Book of the Dead is the modern name for a collection of nearly 200 ancient Egyptian spells, written on papyrus and placed in burials from around…
History & EgyptologyAncient Egyptians believed death was a dangerous passage rather than an end. A person's spiritual elements, above all the ka and the ba, had to be…
History & EgyptologyAn Egyptian temple was a god's house, not a place for public worship: a sequence of gateways, courts and halls leading to a dark sanctuary where…
History & EgyptologyAn obelisk is a tall, four-sided stone shaft, cut from a single block and tapering to a pyramid-shaped tip, raised in pairs at temple gateways as a…
History & EgyptologyThe best-known ancient Egyptian symbols are the ankh (life), the scarab (rebirth and the rising sun), the Eye of Horus (protection and healing), the…
History & EgyptologyA cartouche is the oval loop, tied with a bar at one end, that encloses a pharaoh’s name in hieroglyphs. It represents a rope encircling everything…
History & EgyptologyTutankhamun’s tomb was discovered by the British archaeologist Howard Carter, funded by Lord Carnarvon, when his workmen uncovered its first step in…
History & EgyptologyThe curse of Tutankhamun is a legend, not a fact. It grew out of Lord Carnarvon’s death from an infection in April 1923, months after the tomb was…
History & EgyptologyThe Old Kingdom was Egypt’s first great age of centralised power, from about 2686 to 2181 BC, covering the Third to Sixth Dynasties. Ruled from…
History & EgyptologyThe Middle Kingdom was the period from about 2055 to 1650 BC when Egypt was reunited after a century of division, first by Mentuhotep II of Thebes and…
History & EgyptologyThe New Kingdom, about 1550 to 1069 BC, was ancient Egypt’s age of empire, spanning the Eighteenth, Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties. Its pharaohs,…
History & EgyptologyThe Amarna period is the late 18th Dynasty era, roughly 1353–1323 BC, when Akhenaten made the sun disc, the Aten, the focus of state religion and…
History & EgyptologyNubia is the Nile valley south of Aswan, stretching into Sudan, and Kush was the name of the powerful kingdoms that rose there. Kushite kingdoms at…
History & EgyptologyEgypt was a Roman province for almost 700 years, from Octavian's capture of Alexandria in 30 BC to the Arab conquest of AD 641, with the later…
History & EgyptologyIslamic Cairo is the historic walled city founded by the Fatimid caliphs in 969 beside the older Arab capital of Fustat, then enriched for 900 years…
History & EgyptologyNapoleon Bonaparte invaded Egypt in July 1798 to strike at Britain's route to India, beat the Mamluk cavalry at the Battle of the Pyramids, and then…
History & EgyptologyThe Suez Canal is a sea-level waterway of about 193 km across the Isthmus of Suez, linking the Mediterranean at Port Said with the Red Sea at Suez. It…
History & EgyptologyWhen the Aswan High Dam threatened to drown Abu Simbel, an international campaign led by UNESCO cut both of Ramesses II's rock temples into more than…
History & EgyptologyThe Nile is one of the two longest rivers on Earth, about 6,650 km, formed by the White Nile from the Lake Victoria basin and the Blue Nile from…
History & EgyptologyMost ancient Egyptians were farmers who lived in mud-brick houses in Nile villages, wore simple linen, ate bread, onions and fish, drank beer, and…
History & EgyptologyWomen in ancient Egypt had more legal independence than in most ancient societies: they could own and inherit property, sign contracts, go to court,…
History & EgyptologyAncient Egyptians lived on bread and beer, both made from emmer wheat and barley, with onions, leeks, garlic, lentils, beans, fish and fruit such as…
History & EgyptologyAncient Egypt had trained, state-employed doctors called swnw who examined patients, recorded symptoms and prescribed drugs made from plants,…
History & EgyptologyAncient Egyptians built boats from papyrus reeds for the marshes and from planks of acacia and imported cedar for the river and sea, sewn and pegged…
History & EgyptologyThe ancient Egyptian year followed the Nile: three seasons of four months each, named for the flood (akhet), the growing time (peret) and the harvest…
History & EgyptologyEgyptian mathematics was practical arithmetic and geometry for scribes: a decimal number system, multiplication by doubling, fractions written as sums…
History & EgyptologyThe Valley of the Golden Mummies is a vast Graeco-Roman cemetery near Bawiti in Bahariya Oasis, found in 1996 and excavated by Zahi Hawass from 1999.…
History & EgyptologyThe Battle of Kadesh was fought in 1274 BC on the Orontes River in modern Syria between Ramesses II of Egypt and the Hittite king Muwatalli II.…
History & EgyptologyEgypt has well over 100 pyramids; a commonly quoted count is about 118, depending on what is included. The royal pyramids were built over roughly…
History & EgyptologyAncient Egyptians mummified animals for four reasons: as beloved pets, as food for the afterlife, as sacred animals that embodied a god, such as the…
History & EgyptologyTutankhamun was an 18th Dynasty pharaoh who came to the throne as a child of about eight or nine and ruled for roughly nine or ten years, around…
History & EgyptologyRamesses II, often called Ramesses the Great, ruled Egypt for about 66 years, around 1279–1213 BC, the second-longest reign in Egyptian history. He…
History & EgyptologyHatshepsut was an 18th Dynasty queen who first ruled as regent for her young stepson Thutmose III and then, around 1473 BC, was crowned pharaoh in her…
History & EgyptologyAkhenaten, born Amenhotep IV, ruled Egypt for about 17 years, around 1353–1336 BC. He raised the sun disc, the Aten, above all other gods, closed down…
History & EgyptologyNefertiti was the Great Royal Wife of the pharaoh Akhenaten, around 1353–1336 BC, the mother of six daughters and one of the most powerful queens…
History & EgyptologyCleopatra VII ruled Egypt from 51 to 30 BC, the last active ruler of the Ptolemaic dynasty founded by a general of Alexander the Great. A shrewd,…
History & EgyptologyKhufu, known to the Greeks as Cheops, was the second king of Egypt’s 4th Dynasty, ruling for about 23 to 27 years around 2589–2566 BC. He built the…
History & EgyptologySeti I was the second king of the 19th Dynasty, ruling for about 11 years around 1290–1279 BC. The son of a general who became Ramesses I, he won back…
History & EgyptologyThutmose III ruled Egypt for almost 54 years, around 1479–1425 BC, the first two decades alongside his stepmother Hatshepsut. Once sole king he led…
History & EgyptologyDjoser was a Third Dynasty king who ruled Egypt for about two decades around 2670–2650 BC, and Imhotep was his chief official and, by later tradition,…
History & EgyptologySneferu was the founder of Egypt’s Fourth Dynasty, ruling around 2613–2589 BC, and the father of Khufu. He built or completed three large pyramids –…
History & EgyptologyAmenhotep III ruled Egypt for about 38 years, around 1390–1352 BC, when the Eighteenth Dynasty was at the peak of its wealth and international power.…
History & EgyptologyRamesses III ruled Egypt around 1184–1153 BC, the second king of the Twentieth Dynasty and the last great warrior pharaoh of the New Kingdom. He…
History & EgyptologyNefertari was the first and best-loved Great Royal Wife of Ramesses II, prominent from the start of his reign around 1279 BC until her death some 25…
History & EgyptologyQueen Tiye was the Great Royal Wife of Amenhotep III, married around 1388 BC, and the mother of Akhenaten and grandmother of Tutankhamun. Born to a…
History & EgyptologyAlexander the Great spent about six months in Egypt, from late 332 BC to spring 331 BC. The Persian governor surrendered without a fight, Alexander…
History & EgyptologyPtolemaic Egypt was the period from 305 to 30 BC when Egypt was ruled by a Macedonian Greek dynasty founded by Ptolemy I, one of Alexander the Great’s…
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