Dear friends, I’m so sorry to do this you again but I am having to move the time of both the next two lectures on YouTube, as follows: Mentuhotep II and the Rise of Thebes Thursday 27 November Prev time 1800 NOW CHANGED TO 1600 youtube.com/live/qzSlHGH... And...

The Robert Anderson Trust (of which I'm Director) is now inviting applications for research visits to London in 2026. All the information and a link to the application form can be found on the Trust’s website: robertandersontrust.org/apply/

Folks, TALK LIKE an EGYPTIAN will be going LIVE on Tuesday morning at 10 am (UK time). In audio and video! If we can make it work that is… I know nothing about this but Iszi does and she’s in charge so I’m sure it will be fine. More info: www.patreon.com/posts/livest...

PODCAST NEW EPISODE! Series 1, episode 5: Egyptomania Why are we so obsessed with Ancient Egypt? All children study it, museums w Egyptian objects are always full, documentaries do really well, and we’ve had a couple of waves of Egyptomania... All episodes here: www.patreon.com/collection/1...

Lecture in Rolla, Missouri! Come and say hi! news.mst.edu/2025/09/egyp...

Feeling very honoured to have been invited to give the Thompson Lecture - on 'Tutankhamun: In Life, Death and Eternal Afterlife' - at the Flint Institute of Arts, Michigan, USA: 14938a.blackbaudhosting.com/14938a/Thomp...

IT'S A NEW PODCAST! WOOOO! 🙌 Talk Like and Egyptian with me and @iszi.com. Subscribe via Apple podcasts, Spotify etc, and support us by becoming a member please and thank you. All the info is here: www.patreon.com/cw/TalkLikeA... Enjoy! Oh and LIFE! PROSPERITY! HEALTH! 😀

TEASER! SOMETHING EXCITING COMING SOON! NOT TELLING YOU WHAT! #sodfast

Folks, next year we are at last going back to the Western Desert: www.ancient.co.uk/holiday/karn... Luxor to Kharga in the 4x4s via via Dush, Zayan, Ghweita, Hibis, Bagawat and elsewhere, then onto the GEM, Saqqara and Giza. CANNOT WAIT!

The GEM will finally be fully open later this year and I'll be there with an AWT in February. Come along! mailchi.mp/ancient/temp...

Honoured to have been invited to speak at Missouri S&T (www.mst.edu) on 2 October. If you're nearby please come and say hi!

NEW ONLINE LECTURES for AUGUST 2025 to FEBRUARY 2026! The Karnak Cachette – Fishing for Statues Thurs 28 August 2025 www.youtube.com/live/kdv8yvs... Searching for the Missing Cities of Egypt Thursday 25 September 2025 www.youtube.com/live/9vgk3_i...

Our first ‘MISSING CITIES’ trip has sold out! And so we’ll be doing it again in December 2026 😊 and it’s now open for bookings here: www.ancient.co.uk/holiday/the-...

A long time ago I wrote about the discovery of the temple of Mentuhotep by Naville for the EES’ newsletter: www.academia.edu/1349590/A_Hi... It always seemed to me to be a great story & that the temple has been unfairly overlooked by comparison with its neighbour, the temple of Hatshepsut.

Can't wait for this: ‘TEMPLES & TOMBS – SPECIAL EDITION’ www.ancient.co.uk/holiday/temp... Based mostly in Luxor but with a full day at the GEM at the start. We’ve got a special permit to visit the temple of Mentuhotep II at Deir el-Bahri which I’m really excited about as I’ve never been inside...

I’ve just made my talk on ‘The EGYPTIAN LABYRINTH – The Middle Kingdom and the Faiyum Region’ available for a limited time to everyone via YouTube: youtube.com/live/6yGgwIk...

Petros Koutoupis is talking spirit animals with Egyptologist, @chrisnaunton.bsky.social Digging Up The Past - Episode 23: In Search of Lost Egyptian Tombs More at DiggingUpThePast.com #egypt #egyptology #ancientegypt #ancient #history

Temple & Tombs SPECIAL EDITION. Really excited about this trip as it includes a special permit to visit the spectacular XIth Dynasty temple of Mentuhotep II at Deir el-Bahri... More info / to book: ancient.co.uk/holiday/temp...

Lectures NOT ONLINE! Lots of lectures and study days coming up in the next few weeks and months: London, Northampton, Horsham, Pisa, Italy, Rolla, MO and Flint, MI in the US, Glasgow, Barnsley, Poynton, Taunton and Kent: chrisnaunton.com/lectures-in-...

NEXT WEEKEND (Sat 28 June): Me and Iszi Lawrence will be doing a chat and Q&A after a screening a screening of The Mummy at the British Museum. More info / tickets: www.britishmuseum.org/.../behind-s... See you there? The BM has excellent aircon - added incentive for Londoners at the moment...

Thanks to everyone who came along to my talks on 'THE BATTLE of QADESH – Ramesses the Great vs The Hittites' last week. The recorded version is already available to channel members, here: youtube.com/live/Jo_SUr2...

Life on the Desert Edge: Memories of Beit Emery by Sue Davies - a wonderful new book which I strongly recommend. I've written a brief review here: chrisnaunton.com/2025/06/02/l...

So pleased that friends at Manchester AE Soc are putting on this study day in memory my auntie Jill (McKeown) who died last year, having been a MAES member since the 1980s: bit.ly/3S7qTCL

This was such a fun shoot. Big thank you to the team: Director Sigrid, DoP Josselin, second cameraman Anthony, local producer/fixer Mohamed, Khaled and the boys. Finished product due on French television at Christmas time, and internationally thereafter!

Mosque complex of Kalawoun. Beautiful architecture and partially built with stone from ancient temples (photographing spolia gave me a good chance to get a good pic of Sigrid’s cool skate shoes!) #cairo #oldcairo #elazhar #mosque

I’d never been into the mosque of el-Azhar until this trip. It was dedicated in 972 CE & is now the most important mosque in Egypt, and the most important in the world for the study of sunni theology, and golly gosh is it beautiful: the gleaming white some of the courtyard was almost blinding… (1/)

On my last day we were only filming in the evening which gave us the day to explore Cairo. This the mosque of al-Salih Tala'i which was built in 1160 CE and lies just outside the medieval city walls by the Bab Zuweila (the ‘gate of the Zuweila’ - a Berber tribe from what is now south-western Libya)

Special privilege on this trip to get up to the original entrance of the Great Pyramid to talk about the inscription left by Lepsius. It’s an Egyptian style text, written in excellent hieroglyphs(!), praising the expedition and the King of Prussia… Full post: www.instagram.com/p/DJDI2ciqxp...

It’s rare that I get either a photo of myself that I like or that shows me at work doing telly stuff so I’m very thankful to have been sent several that qualify on both counts by our DOP Josselin. Of course the location helps :) Merci Josselin!

Only my second ever visit to Rashid, or ‘Rosetta’ to us Europeans - a pilgrimage to the fortress where, while it was being rebuilt it in anticipation of Ottoman and British attacks, the famous Rosetta Stone was found by French troops (1/)

The palace of Manial seemed the perfect place for coffee and negotiations (Director Sigrid and Egyptian producer, Mohammed).

Visited the glorious Ottoman palace of Manial on Rhoda Island in Cairo to talk about Lepsius negotiating with Mohammed Aly Pasha for a permit to excavate. It was built by the Pasha’s descendants but in the styles - Ottoman, Mameluke etc - he favoured.

Edfu, temple of Horus. Too lazy to say anything else about it, sorry! It was hot… #edfu #Egypt #Egyptology #archaeology #ancientegypt #pharaohs #ancienthistory #history #egyptian #archeologist #arqueologia #arkeolog #archeologia #archeologie #arkeoloji #αρχαιολογία #Egiptología #AntiguoEgipto

Quick visit to Elkab, a couple of hours south of Luxor, to visit the tomb of Paheri, an early Eighteenth Dynasty official, notable for the tomb-owner’s autobiographical inscription.

V pleased that filming took us into this side chamber in the tomb of Sety I. In the earliest times humanity rebelled against the sun god Ra who had the rebels slaughtered by Hathor and then ascended to the sky and stayed there on the back of the sky goddess Nut, represented by the ‘heavenly cow’.

This was the most brightly decorated of the tombs we could see as we filmed. On the left wall is a scene – a favourite of mine - that appears in many of these tombs showing the goddess Hathor in the form of a cow emerging from the Theban mountain... Full post: www.instagram.com/p/DIt0cu4Kom...

Hello from a week’s filming for a series on the history of Egyptology for French television. This was the morning of my first day with the team, at Dra Abu el-Naga where we filmed some sequences about Mariette’s discovery of the burial of Queen Ahhotep. Full post: www.instagram.com/p/DItyaWjqk1...

MORE NEW LECTURES! May - August 2025 (1/) THE GOD’S WIFE of AMUN – Egypt’s Foremost Priestess Thursday 29 May 2025, 6.00 pm UK time youtube.com/live/-xoiq1E...

NEXT ONLINE TALK: SENENMUT - Hatshepsut’s Right-Hand Man. Tuesday 29 April 2025. 6.00 pm (UK time) youtube.com/live/CCTBcKW... More talks to be announced shortly...

We next followed Senenmut to his ‘lower tomb’ (TT 353) which is located a little to the north of the causeway leading to the mortuary temple of Hatshepsut, whose daughter S tutored, and during whose reign his career reached its peak….

Big thank you to Dominic Perry of The History of Egypt podcast for a chat about the tomb of Thutmose II. You'll have to excuse my sniffles - I had a cold! Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e... Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/3Kzm...

A short, precipitous walk along the hillside from TT 71 is the location of TT 252 which belonged to another tutor of Hatshepsut’s daughter, Neferura, a man named Senimen. Nothing of the tomb itself is visible except for this statue of the tomb owner holding Neferura on his lap. Wow…

Unusual stelae like these are cut into the walk on both sides of the long hall in TT 71. This one reads: ‘The Chief Steward [Senenmut, true of voice] (name erased), made by Ramose (S’s father), born of Hatnefer (his mother)’.

Brilliant trip to Luxor last week, the highlights being visits to both funerary moments of Senenmut. First a rare opportunity to climb up into the Theban hills to visit his ‘upper’ tomb (TT 71) Senenmut first came to prominence as the tutor to Neferura, daughter of Hatshepsut.

Really looking forward to this tour in January 2026: entry to the sphinx enclosure, the GEM, all the way south to Abu Simbel and loads more inbetween! Inner mysteries of Egypt and the Nile, departing 16 January 2026. Further info / to book: ancientoriginstours.com/tour/inner-m...

Big thank you to the Kemet Klub for inviting me back to give another short course, this time on 'Osiris: Myth And Monuments' in April. For more details or to book please see kemetklub.co.uk/product/osir...

Professor Kenneth Kitchen, the great scholar of ancient Egypt and the Near East passed away recently. He was a giant of the field. This is a note of personal appreciation for the support he gave me at a very difficult moment... chrisnaunton.com/2025/03/04/t...

Students of Egyptology! Research grants of up to £500 are available from the Kemet Klub - more details here: kemetklub.co.uk/grants/

Tomb of Thutmose II - UPDATE! The basis for the claim that there might yet be another, intact, tomb of Thutmose II awaiting discovery is explained better in this article published in the Observer today: www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

Tomb of Thutmose II FOUND! Sounds good doesn’t it? But then these press releases often do… In this case I think this really is a very exciting discovery, and I’ve written about it here: chrisnaunton.com/2025/02/21/t...