Cleopatra VII Philopator was the last person to rule Egypt as an Egyptian pharaoh – after her death Egypt became a Roman province.

She was a member of the Ptolemaic dynasty of Ancient Egypt, and therefore was a descendant of one of Alexander the Great’s generals who had seized control over Egypt after Alexander’s death. Cleopatra learned Egyptian and represented herself as the reincarnation of the goddess Hathor.

Cleopatra originally ruled jointly with her father Ptolemy XII Auletes and later with her brothers, Ptolemy XIII and Ptolemy XIV, whom she married as per Egyptian custom, but eventually she became sole ruler. As pharaoh, she consummated a liaison with Gaius Julius Caesar that solidified her grip on the throne. She later elevated her son with Caesar, Caesarion, to co-ruler in name.

After Caesar’s assassination in 44 BC, she aligned with Mark Antony in opposition to Caesar’s legal heir, Gaius Iulius Caesar Octavianus (later known as Augustus). With Antony, she bore the twins Cleopatra Selene II and Alexander Helios, and another son, Ptolemy Philadelphus. Her unions with her brothers produced no children. After losing the Battle of Actium to Octavian’s forces, Antony committed suicide. Cleopatra followed suit, according to tradition killing herself by means of an asp bite on August 12, 30 BC.[3] She was briefly outlived by Caesarion, who was declared pharaoh, but he was soon killed on Octavian’s orders. Egypt became the Roman province of Aegyptus.

Her death marked the end of the Ptolemaic Kingdom and Hellenistic period and the beginning of the Roman era in the eastern Mediterranean.

To this day, Cleopatra remains a popular figure in Western culture. Her legacy survives in numerous works of art and the many dramatizations of her story in literature and other media, including William Shakespeare’s tragedy Antony and Cleopatra, Jules Massenet’s opera Cléopâtre and the 1963 film Cleopatra. In most depictions, Cleopatra is put forward as a great beauty and her successive conquests of the world’s most powerful men are taken to be proof of her aesthetic and sexual appeal.

The Nile River traverses about 1,600 kilometers through Egypt and flows northward to the Mediterranean Sea.

The Nile in Egypt is a combination of three long rivers whose sources are in central Africa. The White Nile, which begins at Lake Victoria in Uganda, supplies about 28% of the Nile’s waters in Egypt. The Blue Nile, which originates at Lake Tana in Ethiopia, provides an average of 58% of the Nile’s waters in Egypt. The much shorter Atbara River, which also originates in Ethiopia, joins the main Nile north of Khartoum between the fifth and sixth cataracts (areas of steep rapids) and provides about 14% of the Nile’s waters in Egypt.

Before the Aswan High Dam was completed in 1971, the White Nile watered the Egyptian stretch of the river throughout the year, whereas the Blue Nile, carrying seasonal rain from Ethiopia, caused the Nile to overflow its banks and deposit a layer of fertile mud over adjacent fields, the Gift of the Nile. The great flood of the main Nile usually occurred in Egypt during August, September, and October.

At Cairo, the Nile spreads out to form a fertile, fan-shape delta about 250 kilometers wide at the seaward base and about 160 kilometers from north to south. The Nile Delta extends over approximately 22,000 square kilometers. Seven branches of the Nile once ran through the Delta. Nature and man have closed all but two main outlets: the east branch, Damietta and the west branch, Rosetta.

A quick walkthrough of a 3D model of the Tomb of Nakht (TT52) in Luxor, Egypt. The model was made with AC3D, lit with Gile[s], and converted to a web-accessible 3D environment using Blink 3D.

In Egyptian mythology, Khepri (also spelled Khepera, Kheper, Chepri, Khepra) is the name of a major god. Khepri is associated with the dung beetle (kheper), whose behavior of maintaining spherical balls of dung represents the forces which move the sun. Khepri gradually came to be considered as an embodiment of the sun itself, and therefore was a solar deity. To explain where the sun goes at night, such pushing was extended to the underworld, Khepri’s pushing of the sun being ceaseless.

Since the scarab beetle lays its eggs in the bodies of various dead animals, including other scarabs, and in dung, from which they emerge having been born, the ancient Egyptians believed that scarab beetles were created from dead matter. Because of this, they also associated the Khepri with rebirth, renewal, and resurrection. Indeed, his name means “to come into being”. As a result of this, when the rival cult of the sun-god Ra gained significance, Khepri was identified as the aspect of Ra which constitutes only the dawning sun (i.e the sun when it comes into being).

Source: Wikipedia

Egypt may not be the first place you’d look for whales, but once upon a time the Wadi Hitan desert was underwater and teeming with the sea giants.

Geologist Philip D. Gingerich and his team had excavated the first known nearly complete skeleton of a Basilosaurus isis. The first of the truly gigantic whales, Basilosaurus had the serpentine shape of a sea monster and short, sharp teeth for hunting sharks and other prey. Unlike today’s whales, it had no blowhole—the ancient behemoth had to raise its head above water to breathe. What’s more, Basilosaurus still had the feet it inherited from its land-dwelling ancestors.

At the famous Luxor Temple on the Nile River, tourists come to touch a wall relief of Min, the ancient God of Fertility, in the hopes that some of his luck will rub off. But now the Pharaonic relief is in danger of destruction.

All the old paintings on the tombs
They do the sand dance don’t you know
If they move too quick (oh whey oh)
They’re falling down like a domino

All the bazaar men by the Nile
They got the money on a bet
Gold crocodiles (oh whey oh)
They snap their teeth on your cigarette

Foreign types with the hookah pipes say
Ay oh whey oh, ay oh whey oh
Walk like an Egyptian

[The] Blonde waitresses take their trays
They spin around and they cross the floor
They’ve got the moves (oh whey oh)
You drop your drink then they bring you more

The goddess, Isis, and King Tut are competing in a game of Senet. She becomes angry with him after he tries to slide through the game and not play fair. Tutenstein gets put in his place when Isis brings about Nebka, the apparition, also a past companion of King Tut’s.

Tutenstein is an animated television series, produced by Porchlight Entertainment for Discovery Kids. It also airs on Jetix in Turkey. It began broadcasting on November 1, 2003. The half-hour series features young mummy Tutankhensetamun (based on real-life Tutankhamun and usually called “Tutenstein” as in the title) who is awakened about 3,000 years after his accidental death and now has to face the fact his kingdom is gone. The series is based on an idea by Jay Stephens. The name is a portmanteau of Tutankhamun and Frankenstein. In October 11, 2008 a TV movie entitled Tutenstein: Clash of the Pharaohs aired on Discovery Kids. The production company, PorchLight Entertainment, based in Los Angeles, California, has won Emmys for the first and second seasons of the series. Irish TV production company Telegael, which is based in An Spidéal, Co Galway, also won an Emmy Award for the second season.
Source: Wikipedia

Play Senet here.

In this Walt Disney’s 1931 black and white animation, a spider goes down a pyramid and finds out the great musical performance they have down there. The spider has only six legs, but then again, cartoon characters traditionally has four fingers and toes.

It’s a story that spans 4,000 years, older than the Bible…and it’s all true. It was lost for thousands of years, discovered a century ago, and its true meaning recently resurrected by the miracle of computer graphics! The reason the Egyptians built the pyramids, it’s the first written description of any religion–and is the likely source of the 10 Commandments! In this feature-length special we follow the ancient scroll from creation around 1800 BC near the site of the Egyptian city of Thebes, to rediscovery (and theft!) in 1887 AD. Join us in a tale that spans from the age of papyrus to the age of silicon…and beyond. Biblical scholars agree that portions of the Old Testament are direct descendants of the Egyptian text, and some archaeologists argue that Moses must have read and carried a copy of it with him when he fled Egypt! And now, a new generation is reexamining the ancient text for wisdom that can still affect our inner lives!

Available at AMAZON