ancient Egypt
Watching Queen Cleopatra felt like witnessing the death of scholarship
The most controversial aspect of Netflix’s new drama-documentary Queen Cleopatra – not least in Egypt – was the casting of…
A purring cat is not always contented
In his vast survey of felines wild and domestic, Jonathan Losos reveals, among much else, that a cat’s purr can convey hunger or panic as well as pleasure
Unimpressive: The Prince of Egypt reviewed
The Prince of Egypt is a musical adapted from a 1998 Dreamworks cartoon based on the Book of Exodus. So…
Enchanting – but don’t fall for the mummified rubber duck in the gift shop: Tutankhamun reviewed
Like Elton John, though less ravaged, Tutankhamun’s treasures are on their final world tour. Soon these 150 artefacts will return…
Why was Sigmund Freud so obsessed with Egypt?
Twenty years ago, I visited the ancient Egyptian city of Amarna with a party of American journalists. Even in those…
Treasures from Ancient Egypt’s wastepaper baskets
In 2016, after some unseemly back-and-forth between the Commons and Lords, it was decided that Acts of Parliament should no…
![Ivory plaque of a lioness mauling a man, ivory, gold, cornelian, lapis lazuli, Nimrud, 900 BC–700 BC. [© The Trustees of the British Museum]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/lioness_plaque.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
The Assyrians of Ashurbanipal’s time were just as into pillage and destruction as Isis
The Assyrians placed sculptures of winged human-headed bulls (lamassus) at the entrances to their capital at Nineveh, in modern Mosul,…
From ancient Egyptian smut to dissent-by-currency: I object at the British Museum reviewed
‘If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear,’…
The treasures of Alexandria revealed: British Museum’s Sunken cities reviewed
It was not so unusual for someone to turn into a god in Egypt. It happened to the Emperor Hadrian’s…
Are Egypt’s obelisks more stunning even than the pyramids?
On the banks of the River Thames in central London, an ancient Egyptian obelisk, known as Cleopatra’s Needle, reaches towards…
In a world full of zombie new operas, thank god for Philip Glass’s Akhnaten
A mixed year so far for new opera. A few really dismal things have appeared from people who should know…
A short history of statue-toppling
Sculptural topplings provide an index of changing times, says Martin Gayford
Egypt: where gods are born and go to die
Tom Holland on Egypt, where the deities were born and history itself began
Roll up, roll up! A history of the circus from Ancient Egypt to the present
Nell Gifford joins a colourful troupe of acrobats, contortionists, lion-tamers, freaks and funambulists
