Garry Shaw's books include The Pharaoh: Life at Court and on Campaign and The Egyptian Myths: A Guide to the Ancient Gods and Legends (Thames and Hudson).

Eternal fame – the world of the Kushite pharaohs

The Louvre’s latest exhibition has revived the vast ancient empire that once united Sudan and Egypt

30 May 2022
Installation view of ‘Drinking with the Gods’, Cité du Vin, Bordeaux, 2021.

Drinking wine in ancient Greece was a divine but demanding business

The gods were great sticklers for ceremony and frowned on oenophiles who didn’t observe the rules

3 Sep 2021
Urban development: on site at the newly discovered ancient Egyptian city known as the Rise of Aten (photo: April 2021).

What did city living look like in ancient Egypt?

The discovery of a 3,000-year old city at the West Bank of Luxor creates a more nuanced picture of ancient Egyptian life

15 Apr 2021
An ancient Egyptian mummy, Nesyamun, laid on the couch to be CT scanned at Leeds General Infirmary.

Have scientists solved a mummy murder mystery?

The latest mummy to go through a CT scanner is Seqenenre Tao II – and researchers are now convinced that he died in a grisly execution ceremony

18 Feb 2021
Ralph Fiennes as the archaeologist Basil Brown in 'The Dig' (2021). Photo: LARRY HORRICKS/NETFLIX © 2021

The British government thinks archaeology doesn’t matter. It couldn’t be more wrong

Funding for archaeology has been slashed by the UK government – and it’s a moronic mistake

4 Feb 2021
The pyramids in the Saqqara necropolis, with the Pyramid of Unas in the foreground and the Step Pyramid of Djoser in the background.

Peak practice – the art of building pyramids in ancient Egypt

Looking beyond the pyramids at Giza, royal tomb design was a more varied affair than we sometimes realise

9 Aug 2019
Relief showing a scene from a deer hunt, 9th century BC, Neo-Hittite kingdom of Milid (modern-day Malatya, Turkey), Musée du Louvre, Paris

‘The Hittites lived in interesting times’ – art after the end of civilisation

A show at the Louvre explores the rise, fall and what remains of the ancient Hittite empire

17 Jun 2019
The artist Gabriel von Max photographed in his atelier in 1892. The city of Mannheim acquired his collection of mummies in 1917.

Meet the mummies – cultural ambassadors from beyond the grave

There’s more to these sets of human remains than bandages, amulets and curses

13 Feb 2019
The Pyramid of Khafre (left) and the Great Pyramid of Giza (right), photographed in October 2018.

The pyramids at Giza looked very different when they were first built

The Egyptian pyramids were originally covered in smooth white limestone – as a casing stone now in Scotland shows

30 Jan 2019
Rock art at the Unesco World Heritage Site of Tassili n'Ajjer in Algeria. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

A history of Algeria in seven stops

A major archaeological discovery has put Algeria’s history in the spotlight. What can its existing world heritage sites tell us about the country’s past?

24 May 2017
Egyptian workers pose next to an excavated statue, recently discovered by a team of German-Egyptian archeologists, in Cairo's Mattarya district on March 13, 2017.

Can a long-lost Egyptian colossus save ancient Heliopolis?

A huge Egyptian statue has been unearthed in a Cairo suburb. Will the global attention it has received lead to further discoveries at the neglected site?

21 Mar 2017

We should all get behind the #Unite4Heritage campaign

Heritage groups around the world need to harness social media to spread their message. This campaign makes that much easier

12 May 2016
Sana'a, Yemen

The threat to Yemen’s heritage

Three world heritage sites are at risk as a result of the civil war

22 Feb 2016

The importance of death in everyday Egyptian life

In ancient Egypt funeral objects were as important in daily life as they were in the afterlife

16 Feb 2016