Ancient Egypt

The land of the Nile, sphinxes, hieroglyphs, pyramids, and famously cursed archaeologists exhuming mummies from painted and gilded sarcophagi, ancient Egypt fuels the imagination. Spanning thousands, yes, literally, thousands of years, Egypt was a durable society with rulers viewed as the intermediary between the gods and mere mortals. When one of these pharaohs, Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten), devoted himself solely to only one god, Aten, he stirred things up, but also launched the period of the Amarna pharaohs whose most famous representative is King Tut and whose most beautiful queen was Nefertiti. When Alexander the Great died, his successors built a city in Egypt named Alexandria that became the lasting cultural center of the ancient Mediterranean world.

Here are photographs and art works giving a glimpse of ancient Egypt.