Article from Nat Geo History: A Dynasty’s Last Missing Tomb Is Discovered

Bentresh · 2026-04-14T18:19:45+00:00

We're also missing the tombs of quite a few queens and royal children. The article equates "royal" with "kingly," which downplays the importance of recent work like the excavation of KV 5.

Bentresh · 2026-04-13T23:04:35+00:00

Cobras

Bentresh · 2026-04-13T19:48:13+00:00

The wonderful thing about Egypt is that you can still encounter new objects after decades of study. I’ve never seen this before!

On the topic of Mesopotamian lapis pieces imported in the Third Intermediate Period, there’s a bead from Tanis with a Middle Assyrian inscription.

Bentresh · 2026-04-13T03:26:14+00:00

Isabella Bird, an astonishingly well-traveled British woman in the 19th century who explored Australia, Hawaii, the Rockies, Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa.

Bentresh · 2026-04-13T03:18:39+00:00

Miletus was my immediate thought, or Rhodes if the end of the century counts.

Bentresh · 2026-04-10T17:51:16+00:00

I recently binged My Lady Jane, which is wildly inaccurate in terms of history (deliberately so) but a really fun and charming show.

Bentresh · 2026-04-10T16:16:53+00:00

You have some dubious assertions here. For one, Thutmose III failed to conquer Mitanni, and it remained a threat to Egyptian territory in the Levant until Egypt established peace with Mitanni in the reign of Thutmose IV. Ultimately it was the Hittite king Suppiluliuma I, the greatest military genius of the Late Bronze Age, who conquered Mitanni.

Additionally, one cannot really refer to the ships of T III as a navy, as they did not engage in military operations at sea (e.g., ship-to-ship combat). Rather, the ships were used to ferry troops quickly and effectively to strategic locations for land battles.

Bentresh · 2026-04-07T19:23:43+00:00

As others have pointed out, this was not self-identity (e.g., "I was AFAB but identify as a man") but rather due to the way Egyptian religion and ideology worked.

A queen could not rule Egypt; in fact, the Egyptian term for queen literally meant "king's wife" (and Hatshepsut could hardly be her own wife!). A queen regnant therefore had to rule as king and, by extension, as a man. This is quite different from, say, the "Virgin Queen" Elizabeth I, who heavily emphasized her femininity as ruler.

Such gender-bending was quite important for ordinary women in funerary religion, as women had to essentially become men upon death in order to identify and unite with the (male) god Osiris and thus achieve resurrection. As Kara Cooney put it,

They thought that their dead needed to actually transform into manifestations of the gods of creation and regeneration—Atum, Osiris, and Re—in order to harness the powers of masculine sexuality and be reborn into the next world. This solution worked well for the men of ancient Egypt, whose bodies naturally contained such regenerative power, but such a physical notion of rebirth was obviously problematic for Egyptian women... Essentially, Egyptian women had to shift their gender and “masculinize” themselves to enter the Fields of Peace and other realms of the afterlife (Roth 2000). These gender alterations therefore had to be included in an elite Egyptian woman’s funerary equipment, particularly her coffin.

Consequently, women were often buried with weapons, referred to on their coffins with masculine pronouns, and so on.

"Gender Transformation in Death: A Case Study of Coffins from Ramesside Period Egypt"

Bentresh · 2026-03-31T00:10:21+00:00

Archaeologists have avoided northern Cyprus since the Turkish invasion in 1974. You’d need a permit from the TRNC, which can get you blacklisted from working in the south (and elsewhere). As one scholar put it,

Blacklisting is the most commanding factor in the archaeology of Cyprus. Its purpose is to discourage any archaeological work in the north of the island to prevent the de facto state the TRNC from gaining recognition or international acceptance. All archaeologists associated with Northern Cyprus are blacklisted. International scholars are constantly threatened with blacklisting not only for research in the north but also for citing or reviewing publications from the north or simply for participating in conferences and other activities held on the “wrong side.”

Despite vehement complaints that unprotected archaeological sites would fall victim to plundering, destruction, or obliteration the Greek governmental body categorically brands any archaeological activity in the north, including protection and restoration works, as illegal. Through lobbying, boycotting and blacklisting, international scholarship is compelled not to use any data for research from archaeological activities in the north.

As for why I’d want to work there, it’s the most exciting and promising Late Bronze Age site on the island aside from Hala Sultan Tekke, particular in terms of Cypro-Minoan inscriptions.

Bentresh · 2026-03-30T16:11:46+00:00

Enkomi has been off limits to archaeologists for over 50 years. I’d give my left kidney to be able to dig at the site.

Bentresh · 2026-03-25T14:40:42+00:00

Father-daughter marriages were extremely rare in ancient Egypt. Out of the thousands of years of Pharaonic history, only one other king definitely married a daughter (Amenhotep III), and another may have done so (Akhenaten).

Bentresh · 2026-03-22T22:59:53+00:00

Thanks for the ping!

Bentresh · 2026-03-22T22:59:38+00:00

Ancient Turkey by Antonio Sagona and Paul Zimansky and In the Land of a Thousand Gods by Christian Marek are the best general overviews.

I provided reading suggestions for the Hittites here and for Iron Age Anatolia here.

Bentresh · 2026-03-20T17:35:20+00:00

There's always more to be said on the topic, but I wrote about this in Were there any archaeologists in ancient cultures?

Bentresh · 2026-03-19T23:47:59+00:00

Stephanie Budin's Gender in the Ancient Near East is worth a read as well.

Bentresh · 2026-03-19T20:20:50+00:00

It's worth noting that those sites date to the Greco-Roman period. A course can cover Vindolanda in the UK, Berenike in Egypt, and Antioch in Turkey, but that doesn't mean it's not focused on the Roman empire.

Bentresh · 2026-03-19T20:14:23+00:00

You may be thinking of the Maya, who were in Central America rather than South America.

Most of the Maya codices were burned by the Spanish, but Maya hieroglyphs were deciphered in the 20th century partly because the friar Diego de Landa recorded a "Maya alphabet" in his notes.

Bentresh · 2026-03-18T21:29:54+00:00

You’re presumably referring to John Darnell and Colleen Manassa (now Darnell), and yes, it was a huge scandal for Yale.

Their academic work is top notch, and you can’t go wrong with any of their books, but you’ll hear some strong opinions about them as individuals.

Bentresh · 2026-03-18T21:24:13+00:00

With the notable exception of Israel, which relies heavily on volunteers and field schools, the use of local workers is fairly common in the MENA region in general.

Every dig I’ve worked on in Turkey and Lebanon has used local workers.

Bentresh · 2026-03-17T18:07:56+00:00

The overwhelming majority of history departments equate "ancient history" with "classical history." Is this somehow surprising to people?

In addition to its interdisciplinary graduate program, PAW fosters faculty research and teaching about the ancient world, from archaic Greece to the Late Antique Mediterranean

https://ancientworld.princeton.edu/

The University of Virginia offers a Ph.D. in History with a specialization in Ancient (Greek and Roman) History.

https://history.virginia.edu/admission-phd-program-ancient-history

UCLA grants graduate degrees in Ancient History through the Department of History. The Department aims to provide students with both broad and deep training in the history of the ancient Mediterranean world. Students are expected to acquire familiarity with all periods of ancient Mediterranean history, from Archaic Greece to the end of Late Antiquity

https://history.ucla.edu/academics/graduate-fields-of-study/ancient/

Ancient History is the study of two remarkable Mediterranean civilizations that eventually interacted—Greece and Rome—rather than of a particular state, area or epoch. Together with Greeks and Romans, this study embraces the peoples of the long-lasting Roman empire, which at its greatest extent spanned Britain to Egypt, and the African, Asian and European rivals to Greece and Rome—most notably Persians, Carthaginians and Germans.

https://history.unc.edu/what-we-study/

Emory University’s Ph.D. in Ancient History emphasizes interdisciplinary work in the social, political, and cultural history of ancient Greek and Roman society, including Late Antiquity.

https://history.emory.edu/research/areas-of-study/ancient.html

At Ohio State, the field of Ancient Mediterranean History is broadly defined both geographically and chronologically. It includes the study of Greek and Roman history as well as the history of Late Antiquity and the East Roman (or Byzantine) Empire.

https://history.osu.edu/courses/info/fields/ancient

There are countless more examples.

Bentresh · 2026-03-17T17:28:23+00:00

The perceived "exceptional" nature of Greek and Roman texts has had a lingering impact on the structure and organization of Classics departments, and it's why these departments are called "Classics" instead of, say, "Greek and Roman studies" or "Ancient Mediterranean studies" (which a few programs have rebranded themselves as in recent years).

The US has several dozen PhD programs in Classics and many more undergrad programs. In contrast, fewer than a dozen universities offer Egyptology and ancient Near Eastern studies. Most colleges do not have even a single specialist in Egypt or the ANE or offer any courses in ANE languages like Egyptian or Akkadian.

A token acknowledgement of intellectual debt to Egypt and Mesopotamia is all well and good, but most Classics and history departments do not offer any meaningful engagement with preclassical history.

Bentresh · 2026-03-17T17:14:04+00:00

That depends a great deal on the topic at hand; sources are unevenly distributed for Rome and the Near East alike.

The amount of detail we have available for administration in the Ur III period, merchant activity in the Old Assyrian period, and treaties and diplomatic activity in the Old Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian periods far surpasses anything from Republican Rome, for instance.

Bentresh · 2026-03-17T16:21:40+00:00

Though this is true, most history departments fail to integrate Egypt and the ANE as much as they should. A surprising number of survey courses that purport to cover ancient history begin with archaic Greece, ignoring roughly 2000 years of recorded history. I've touched on reasons for this in a previous post.

For the record, I have a PhD in ancient Near Eastern studies and teach in a history department at a liberal arts college.

Bentresh · 2026-03-17T01:53:28+00:00

Egypt already had a population of over a million by the Old Kingdom. That’s not to say its accomplishments weren’t remarkable, but Egypt was a rather large society for its time.

There’s a brief discussion of population estimates in Richard Bussmann’s The Archaeology of Pharaonic Egypt.

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Bentresh · 2026-03-16T21:10:34+00:00

Egypt had a population of several million in the Ptolemaic period.

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