Jostein Gripsrud: The Dynasty Years

The Meckel Dynasty in Medical Education *

A Iv Dynasty Portrait Head

At the turn of the century scholars of Egyptian art were startled by the appearance of life-size portrait heads in excavations at Gizeh, the site of a large necropolis of the Old Kingdom. Until their discovery it was considered an almost invariable rule that private sculpture of the period represented types, not individuals. The Sheikh el Beled and several other representations of individuals w...

Royal Portraits of the Twelfth Dynasty

provincials who time and time again saved their ancient land from ruin and injected new vigor into a civilization grown tired and an art grown smug and empty with the passing centuries. The new dynasty established its seat of government near Memphis, a center which still clung to the serene artistic traditions of the Old Kingdom, dead and gone for over two hundred years. Although the newcomers ...

Archaeogenomic evidence reveals prehistoric matrilineal dynasty

For societies with writing systems, hereditary leadership is documented as one of the hallmarks of early political complexity and governance. In contrast, it is unknown whether hereditary succession played a role in the early formation of prehistoric complex societies that lacked writing. Here we use an archaeogenomic approach to identify an elite matriline that persisted between 800 and 1130 C...

Akhenaten and the strange physiques of Egypt's 18th dynasty.

Akhenaten was one of Egypt's most controversial pharaohs, in part because of his strange appearance in images produced after he had declared Aten, the Sun-disc, his one-and-only god. Whether these were symbolic representations or realistic ones that indicate a deforming genetic disorder is the subject of continuing debate. The authors present evidence that the bizarre physical features portraye...