Sadd el-Kafara: The Oldest Dam in The World
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 6, 2023
About 40 km southeast of Cairo, close to the town of Helwan, lie the ruins of the Sadd-el-Kafara, a large embankment dam built approximately...
Showing posts with the label Egypt
The Diary of Merer: A 4,500-Year-Old Papyrus That Details The Construction of The Great Pyramid
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 22, 2022
The Great Pyramids of Giza has been one of the world’s greatest enigmas—how did an ancient society build such massive monuments without the ...
Deciphering Fragments of Egyptian Ceramics
Anonymous
Apr 22, 2022
In February 2022, archaeologists discovered over 18,000 Egyptian ostraca in Athribis. The news was full of headlines about pottery fragments...
Treaty of Kadesh: The World’s First Peace Treaty
Kaushik Patowary
Mar 10, 2022
On the walls of the Temple of Karnak near Luxor, Egypt, and on the temple of Pharaoh Ramesses II in Thebes, are engravings that describe a g...
Ancient Board Games
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 28, 2022
Playing games is a great way to socialize with friends and pass time in an enjoyable way. Humans recognized this a long time ago before ther...
Canal of the Pharaohs: The Forerunner to The Suez Canal
Kaushik Patowary
May 21, 2021
The Suez Canal may be a marvel of modern engineering, but there is nothing modern about digging canals. Navigable waterways have been dug si...
The Cave of Swimmers
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 14, 2021
Thousands of years ago, the Sahara was surprisingly green with rich vegetation, trees and lakes that covered almost all of what is now sandy...
The Turin Erotic Papyrus
Kaushik Patowary
Nov 5, 2020
The Turin Erotic Papyrus is an ancient Egyptian papyrus scroll-painting that has long been a subject of intense interest among Egyptologists...
Abu Ballas: The Pottery Hill
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 3, 2020
In 1917, British surveyor Dr. John Ball made an unusual discovery in the Libyan desert in Egypt. About 180 km south-west of the Dakhla Oases...
The Relocation of Abu Simbel Temples
Kaushik Patowary
Jul 27, 2020
Hundreds of towns and villages have perished due to massive earth-moving projects such as the construction of dams. But the temples at Abu S...
The Pigeon Breeders of Cairo
Kaushik Patowary
Dec 3, 2019
Perched on rooftops across Cairo, like water tanks on elevated platforms, are rickety wooden cages where Cairenes keep their pigeons. Pigeo...
The Ancient Egg Hatcheries of Egypt
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 11, 2019
Chickens that are raised in farms are almost never hatched by their mothers. Instead, they are hatched using artificial heat in large elect...
Edwin Smith Papyrus: The 3,600-Year-Old Textbook of Surgery
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 11, 2019
In 1862, an American Egyptologist named Edwin Smith bought an ancient scroll of papyrus from an Egyptian dealer. Smith didn’t know how to re...
The Ancient Portraits of Fayuum Mummies
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 22, 2019
These haunting portraits of long-dead men, women and children come from a vast region known as the Fayuum Basin, located immediately to the ...
A Short History of Showering
Kaushik Patowary
Jan 8, 2019
Personal hygiene hasn’t always been an integral part of grooming, yet the need to clean oneself easily and quickly was as pressing in ancien...
How War Marooned 15 Ships in The Suez Canal For Eight Years
Kaushik Patowary
Sep 25, 2018
The Arabs and the Jews have never got along. Since the rise of Zionism and Arab nationalism towards the end of the 19th century, the two gro...
Saint Catherine's Monastery And The World’s Oldest Library
Kaushik Patowary
May 12, 2018
Deep in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt, in a region of wilderness made up of granite rock and rugged mountains, lies the town of Saint Catheri...
Bir Tawil: The Land No Country Wants
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 26, 2018
Wedged between the borders of Egypt and Sudan is a small parcel of land that is truly unique in this world. It is one of the last unclaimed ...
Whale Graveyards
Kaushik Patowary
Feb 22, 2018
Movement of the earth’s crust over millions of years have drastically changed the geography of the planet such that what is land now was onc...
The Unfinished Obelisk of Aswan
Kaushik Patowary
Oct 18, 2017
The granite quarries located along the Nile, in the city of Aswan, supplied some of the finest quality stones for the construction of temple...
