The Amarna letters are about 350 baked clay tablets, found in the ruins of Akhetaten. They are mainly letters written to the king of Egypt from the kings and princes of Assyria, Babylonia, Mitanni, Cyprus, Palestine, Syria and Hatti (the Hittites).
The tablets are written in cuneiform script, (wedge-like shapes), and in Akkadian, the [...]

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Egyptian art sometimes demonstrates the king’s power by showing him as a powerful animal, such as a lion or sphinx. This was a reminder that he was a god, who could appear in many forms.
The king was also represented as a strong bull, which gave rise to the “Festival of the Tail” - the [...]

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The river Nile, snaking its way across the desert and into the sea, first attracted people to its banks many thousands of years ago. At first, they moved around and survived by hunting animals and gathering what they could to eat. Then, by around 5500BC, people started to settle along the riverbank and [...]

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I often think I’m jinxed, because everything I do - which should be easy, and is for other people - becomes a huge headache. It’s Murphy’s Law that if it can go wrong, it will, especially when I’m involved.
Updating to openSUSE 10.1 was NOT a breeze. The set of discs that I bought [...]

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Chapter 11 turned out to be a real “stopper” - as in stop writing or editing. The chapter was awful.
I remember the feedback on that chapter, and everyone said the same thing. “I hate that scene, it’s so boring.” Alright, I admit that they didn’t actually use those words, but they may [...]

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The king was considered so important that people didn’t refer to him directly. They spoke of the “Palace” or “per-aa” instead. This is the origin of the title “pharaoh”. Kings had two different names: their “Son of Re” name, received at birth, and their nsw-bity name, received when they were crowned. [...]

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Ancient Egyptian history is divided into three large parts, known as the Old, Middle and New Kingdoms. Smaller parts are known as periods. The pharaohs are ordered into 31 dynasties, or groups. This simplified table lists the dynasties, their approximate dates and the dates that some pharaohs reigned.
All dates are BCE (before [...]

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For European explorers in the 18th century, it was difficult to make sense of the ancient monuments. They couldn’t tell who had built them, when or why, because they couldn’t read hieroglyphs, the Egyptian picture writing.
Then, in 1798, Britain and France went to war, and fought in Egypt. Napoleon, the French general, took [...]

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The most common textile in Egypt was linen. It was mostly a spotless white. Dyes such as iron (red), indigo (blue) and saffron (yellow) were sometimes used, but coloured and patterned clothes were usually the mark of a foreigner.
However, the Egyptians did decorate their clothes with beads and beautiful feathers. Wool was [...]

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Working people in Egypt were often paid in food. They ate bread, onions and salted fish, washed down with a sweet, grainy beer. Flour was often gritty and the teeth of many mummies show signs of severe wear and tear. Dough was kneaded with the feet or by hand, and pastry cooks [...]

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