This new Archaeopress volume, with its eye-popping cover, is in effect a manifesto for 'Egypopcult', an emerging multi-disciplinary project studying ancient Egypt as reflected in contemporary popular culture, going beyond the use of Egyptian motifs, narratives, and characters from the pharaonic past. The authors argue that, with the rapid expansion of mass communication, we can no longer ignore the role and influence of historical fiction, comic books, television, animations, cinema, and video games in attracting people to Egyptianising themes – or the stereotypes that have been established by these 'cultural forces'. Video games alone – there are more than 300 based around ancient Egyptian themes – can recreate a realistic immersive world where the player becomes a direct participant in the events of the past. However, creators of pop culture can take considerable artistic and historical liberties for the sake of dramatic effect, which has a 'resounding impact' on collective perceptions of the past.
The authors argue that these cultural influences are important forms of reading and perceiving the Egyptian past, and should be part of Egyptological debate. Promoting such debate is the main aim of the project – together with the creation of a free online database of works of popular culture as a source for future research. This volume initiates the debate with a series of in-depth analyses of different forms of pop culture, including Sir Terry Pratchett's use of ancient Egypt to critique the modern world in his Discworld book Pyramids; the portrayal of Hatshepsut by Pauline Gedge in her novel Child of the Morning; and the sexuality of ancient Egypt in popular culture – in particular the fascination with Cleopatra as a femme fatale in films and video games.
How Pharaohs Became Media Stars: Ancient Egypt and Popular Culture edited by Abraham I Fernández Pichel Archaeopress Egyptology 48 Archaeopress, 2023 ISBN 978-1-80327-626-7 Paperback £45; Open-Access pdf free from www.archaeopress.com
Professor uses pop culture to demystify pharaohs, pyramids and more
By Roy Rivenburg, UCI
Luiza Osorio G. Silva, a UC Irvine assistant professor of art history, has decorated her office with Egyptian kitsch, including a replica coffin and a homemade mummy she has owned since childhood. Steve Zylius / UC Irvine
Summary Luiza Osorio G. Silva, who grew up entranced by mummy movies, is the Department of Art History's first Egyptologist. Her classes cover everything from tomb artwork to royal power, and she's involved with three archaeological excavations in the Middle East.
She haunts ancient Egyptian graveyards, co-hosts a Portuguese podcast called "Three Egyptologists Walk Into a Bar" and keeps a miniature mummy in her office.
Last fall, Luiza Osorio G. Silva joined UC Irvine as an assistant professor of art history specializing in pyramids, sphinxes, pharaohs – and a splash of beer.
Early Egyptians drank lots of ale, she says.
They also believed statues were able to live and breathe after a ceremonial knife was used to open their mouths. "Art in Egypt was not just art," Silva notes. "Statues of gods were considered living gods, and the verb for sculpting one translated to 'birthing' rather than 'making.'"
Originally from Brazil, Silva traces her fascination with the land of the Nile to watching mummy movies with her dad as a kid. And when she was 5 or 6, the family traveled to England and visited the British Museum's Near East collection and giftshop – from which Silva returned with a small metal coffin and a figurine that she wrapped in gauze and placed inside. Today, the makeshift mummy rests on a shelf in her office.
Armed with Egyptian archaeology degrees from Brown University and the University of Chicago, Silva has researched everything from "magical bricks" found in old tombs to how royalty was perceived by average citizens. She's also involved with a trio of Middle East excavation projects.
At the ancient Egyptian tomb of Ahmose, son of Ibana, Silva reads the deceased's autobiography. Didi El-Behaedi
One of Silva's goals is to demystify early Egypt for the general public and show its relevance to modern times. In 2022, she and two other scholars launched a Portuguese podcast called "Tres Egiptologues Entram num Bar" that uses pop culture portrayals of Egypt as a hook to introduce scientific studies of the civilization's past. A spinoff book club discusses Egyptian-themed novels by the likes of Agatha Christie and Ellery Queen.
In a similar vein, Silva's UC Irvine classes have students create a virtual art museum exhibit, a podcast or a historical character study as a final project. Her inspiration for the assignments was a Brown University course in which she had to make a Facebook profile for an Egyptian queen named Ahhotep. As part of her presentation, Silva concocted Nile Valley parodies of modern slang and idioms. Instead of YOLO ("You only live once") and "I love you to the moon and back," her glossary featured YOLF ("You only live forever") and "I love you to the land of the dead and back." OMG was replaced by OMA, for "Oh, my Amun," a famous old-world god. And #drinkbeer was a key hashtag.
Hiring an Egyptologist is part of the art history department's ongoing effort to expand its geographic and chronological depth, says James Nisbet, who chairs the program. Although the department has long included Egyptian art and architecture among its broad history classes, Silva's courses – such as "Pyramids and Power" and "Imagery of Violence" – are the first Nile-centric offerings.
Fittingly, her office is sprinkled with Egyptian kitsch, including a serpent-handled coffee mug, an itty-bitty pyramid and a fake papyrus painting of goddesses on a boat. "I have more at home," she says.
And, of course, Silva is ready to hold forth on all manner of Egypt arcana and trivia, from the 1922 discovery of King Tut's tomb (a media circus) and creepy mummification methods (brains were removed through the nostrils) to maddening myths (no, the pyramids weren't used to store grain) and her favorite beverage (karkadeh – hibiscus tea).
When asked about the Bangles' 1986 song "Walk Like an Egyptian" (a phrase that also turns up in the movie version of To Kill a Mockingbird), Silva pulls out artwork depicting a man with one crooked arm stretched forward and the other reaching back. Pointing out that his head faces sideways, but his eye faces the viewer, she says, "It's not because Egyptian artists didn't understand perspective. We think they were simply trying to show the most recognizable parts of whatever they painted. In this case, the eye is more recognized frontally."
As further evidence, she displays a second piece of Egyptian art – an aerial view of trees around a rectangular pool, except the trees look like they're lying flat on the ground, and the fish and ducks in the pool are likewise seen from the side instead of from overhead.
Silva's Egyptomania has spread to her parents, who were skeptical when she switched majors in college but now love to watch documentaries about the civilization. However, their daughter doesn't join them. "Seeing a documentary reminds me of work," she says. "I prefer a good mummy movie."
An astrophysicist has shed new light on how the ancient Egyptians viewed our galaxy thousands of years ago.
In an "exciting" study published in the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, Or Graur with the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation at the University of Portsmouth in the United Kingdom, has revealed how the Milky Way may have been linked to the ancient Egyptian sky goddess Nut.
"This [study] is a new way to look at the sky goddess and at the way astronomy may have been used by the ancient Egyptians," Graur told Newsweek.
The Egyptians had an advanced understanding of astronomy for their time. They cataloged stars, mapped constellations, tracked the movements of celestial bodies like the sun and moon, and created the concept of a 365-day calendar, among other achievements. Further, the Egyptians wove the workings of the night sky into many aspects of their culture and mythology.
This reconstruction of a fresco from a tomb at Thebes in Egypt's Valley of the Kings shows the sky goddess Nut, studded with stars, arched over her brother Geb, god of the earth, and held...
DEA PICTURE LIBRARY/De Agostini via Getty Images
For most of humanity, prior to modern light pollution, the visible band of our galaxy was one of the most distinctive features in the night sky. Most, if not all, cultures have a specific name and origin story for it. But despite the ancient Egyptians' interest in the night sky, the name and role of the Milky Way in their culture remain unclear.
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One suggestion previously proposed by experts is the Milky Way was seen by the Egyptians as a celestial manifestation of Nut. In the latest study, Graur set out to determine whether or not this was the case and if the goddess could be linked to our galaxy.
It was already clear that Nut played a key role in ancient Egyptian cosmology, with the goddess often depicted arched over her brother, Geb—and sometimes studded with stars.
"In Egyptian cosmology, the world, which consisted of Egypt and its immediate neighbors, was surrounded by infinite, inert waters," Graur wrote in the study. "The Earth, personified by the god Geb, was protected from the encroaching waters by the sky, personified by Geb's sister and consort, Nut, who was held aloft by the atmosphere, represented by their father, Shu."
Nut also played an important role in the Egyptian conception of the solar cycle, in which the sun is ferried by boat across the water of the sky from dawn to dusk. It was believed that Nut swallows the sun as it sets before giving birth to it once more when it rises.
Graur is an astrophysicist, not an Egyptologist, but the scholar came across Nut while investigating the many names and creation stories different cultures have for the Milky Way during research for an upcoming book on galaxies.
"In the case of ancient Egypt, that led me to read the original articles on Nut and the Milky Way," Graur told Newsweek.
The researcher was not convinced by the arguments made by the original Egyptologists, so he decided to try and test the link between Nut and the Milky Way using modern astronomical simulations of the night sky, in addition to studying the goddess' description in as many Egyptian texts as possible.
These investigations drew from a rich collection of ancient Egyptian sources, with the most relevant information in this case found in the Pyramid Texts, Coffin Texts and Book of Nut.
"None of the previous studies had used the Book of Nut, which turned out to contain the most important link between Nut and the Milky Way," Graur said.
The astronomical simulations Graur ran showed what the night sky would have looked like in ancient Egyptian times.
"Then, as today, the Milky Way's appearance changed as it rose and set throughout the night, as well as from one season to the next," Graur wrote in Scientific American. "In the winter, it would cross the sky diagonally from the southeast to the northwest, whereas in the summer, its orientation would flip so that it arched from the northeast to the southwest."
Couple sitting on the top of a hill over a city looking at shooting stars and the Milky Way in the background. A scholar recently worked to link the Milky Way to the Egyptian goddess...
Oscar Gutierrez Zozulia/Getty Images
Combining the Egyptian texts and astronomical simulations led Graur to propose that there could have been a link between Nut and the Milky Way, although his argument differs to previously suggested hypotheses.
"As opposed to previous attempts to link them, I don't think the Milky Way is Nut—i.e., a manifestation of her," Graur told Newsweek. "Instead, I think the Milky Way helped the ancient Egyptians see Nut fulfilling her role as the sky."
In the paper, the researcher proposes that the description of the goddess in the Book of Nut is consistent with the appearance of the Milky Way in the night sky—her head and groin associated with the western and eastern horizons, respectively.
Graur argues that Nut's cosmological roles (swallowing and giving birth to the sun, for example) require her to be ever-present and static in the night sky.
"As a consequence, Nut's body could never be mapped onto the Milky Way. If it were, then she would be seen to rise and set with the Milky Way instead of remaining fixed to the horizons," Graur told Scientific American.
Instead, the researcher proposes that the summer and winter orientations of the Milky Way could be seen as figurative markers of Nut's torso (or backbone) and her arms, respectively—a reminder of her constant presence in the sky.
"During the winter, the Milky Way highlighted Nut's outstretched arms, while during the summer it sketched out her backbone (or torso)," Graur told Newsweek. "You can think of the Milky Way as a spotlight illuminating different parts of Nut (the sky) throughout the year."
Graur said the latest study does not provide definitive proof that Nut was linked to the Milky Way in ancient Egypt—it is only one interpretation. But he said his research also fits well into a larger framework of Milky Way creation stories across cultures.
"The more I research the creation stories of the Milky Way, the more similarities I find between cultures around the world and throughout time," Graur said. "There's something deeply, fundamentally human about the way in which we think of the Milky Way."
"This paper is an exciting start to a larger project to catalogue and study the multicultural mythology of the Milky Way," he said in a press release.
Update 4/10/24, 4:39 p.m. ET: This article was updated to clarify that a reference to the western and eastern horizons refers to the night sky.
If Egyptologists studied only massive stone monuments, gleaming golden sarcophagi, and brightly painted tomb walls, they would understand ancient Egypt as an almost exclusively masculine world. Most of the pyramids and temples were built to glorify male pharaohs and most of the sumptuously decorated tombs that archaeologists have unearthed belonged to men. "There's a huge gender gap and a bias toward men in the archaeological record," says Egyptologist Ines Köhler of Humboldt University. "But people had children, so there must have been at least some women." Some of these unseen women may be hiding in plain sight on less conspicuous artifacts, such as a 19-inch-tall painted limestone stela on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Unearthed by a team from the museum during the 1930s in a prominently located shaft tomb in the necropolis at Thebes, the stela dates to the later part of the Middle Kingdom (ca. 2030–1640 B.C.). Köhler and her fellow Humboldt University Egyptologist Eva-Maria Engel recently reexamined the stela and translated its hieroglyphic inscription. It depicts two adult women and two young girls, possibly sisters, identified by their personal names, which appear above their heads. They stand next to an offering table topped with meat, vegetables, fruit, and bread, under which sit vessels filled with beverages. These four are not, however, the only women mentioned on the stela, as there are nine female names in total. Köhler and Engel have concluded that some of the women belonged to four generations of a single family, including a grandmother, mother, and her niece and daughters. Scholars originally surmised that the stela had fallen into a man's tomb by accident. "Men's stelas are never described as falling into shafts by accident. We still say it's a man's tomb," says Engel. "Why can't this tomb have belonged to a woman or to several women?"
Egyptian stelas identifying extended families of multiple generations are common, but Köhler says that examples including only women are very rare. And, although at least some of the women were blood relatives, she and Engel believe they may also have been linked by a shared profession connected to women's health, childbirth, and childcare. "Most female professions in ancient Egypt don't have titles," Engel says. There are exceptions, such as chantress and priestess, but, she explains, other roles are less frequently attested and therefore difficult to identify. Köhler suggests that women would pass on information about midwifery, child-rearing, and mothers' and children's illnesses and health, creating a network of untitled professionals. "Maybe the women on the stela were really close because they all did the same thing and shared their accumulated knowledge," she says.
(Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Birth tusk
Köhler and Engel's identification of the tomb as belonging to a woman or women engaged in women's and children's care is bolstered by the discovery in the shaft of a birth tusk, made of hippopotamus ivory, also dating to the late Middle Kingdom. The object is carved with an image of a fox head with lotus blossoms between its ears and a row of figures including a knife-wielding jackal, a frog, a crocodile, and a griffin. There are many examples of birth tusks, which are sometimes called magic wands, but Köhler explains that since most came to museums by way of the art market, it's usually impossible to establish their original context. Nevertheless, based on the images found on these artifacts—protective symbols, demons, animals, and sometimes particular deities or even an inscription related to the safety of a mother and child—it seems clear that they were associated with birth and the protection of pre- and postpartum mothers and children, and with what Köhler and Engel call a more feminine setting. "There are medical papyri that say a lot about women's health, and especially about contraception, menstruation, and maybe even abortion, but not about how to deal with birth, midwifery, breastfeeding, or children's care," Köhler says. "Who do you ask what to do when your baby won't stop crying? This type of knowledge is transmitted orally, and these women can be somewhat invisible in the archaeological record." No doubt there are many more subtle traces of women's lives in the Egyptological record that are waiting to be found by those who know to look for them.
The Egyptian Mummy Room containing the CT scan visualisations of Meruah (far left) and Mer-Neith-it-es (far right). The complete wrapped mummified body of Meruah in her coffin, and the complete wrapped mummified body of a young boy named Horus (concealed from view) remain on display. (Image: Usyd)
April 8, 2024
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From University of Sydney news
Unwrapped ancient Egyptian mummified body parts will be returned to the University of Sydney's Museum store while it works to implement better practices with Egyptian communities and authorities.
The University of Sydney's museum is home to Australia's largest permanent collection of Egyptian antiquities, a holding of more than 5,000 items, including mummified human and animal remains. More than 300 items are on display at any one time.
The remains of two mummified bodies (Meruah and Horus), their 3D visualisations generated from CT scans, and CT scan data of another mummified body (Mer-Neith-it-es) remain on display. Materials excavated from the coffin of Mer-Neith-it-es, including an endocast (internal cast) of the skull, resin and wax ear, and glazed pottery beads, have also been removed, to accommodate a new display.
The fully wrapped mummified body of Meruah (c. 1000 BC) in her coffin, and her CT scan visualisations (left) and the empty coffin of Padiashakhet (c. 700 BC) (right), probably both from Thebes. (Image Usyd)
Unwrapped body parts will be returned to the Museum's closely monitored collection store.
"For hundreds of years body parts in museum collections have been treated as objects," says Dr Melanie Pitkin, Senior Curator of the museum's Nicholson Collection. "We have become so accustomed to seeing them on show that we often forget they once belonged to living people."
Pitkin says the changes come after extensive research into attitudes towards the ethics and display of human remains, undertaken with museum visitors, and Egyptian communities locally and abroad. This included a survey of museum goers, a weekend of intensive focus groups with 17 members of the Egyptian-Australian community from Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, and an in-depth survey for local Egyptians who have visited the Chau Chak Wing Museum.
The museum is also planning to reframe the language and messaging around human remains. This includes the renaming of 'The Mummy Room' in consultation with Egyptian communities for next year.
"The word mummy derives from the Arabic word mūmiya, meaning bitumen, which refers to how a mummified body looked after resins were applied." says Pitkin. "It's a colonial term embraced when Egyptomania took hold in Western cultures in the 19th century.
"In renaming the room we'd like to focus more on the transformation of the body into an eternal being, which is the whole point of mummification, rather than the body itself. We also encourage visitors to critically reflect on the ethical complexities museums face when caring for human remains."
The American Research Center in Egypt, Northern California chapter, and the UC Berkeley Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures invite you to attend a lecture by Dr. Aidan Dodson, University of Bristol:
Ancient Egypt
