Afterlives of Ancient Egypt with Kara Cooney

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Cleopatra, Patriarchy, and the Trap of Honor
CW// self-harm and suicideKara and Amber take on the most famous death in all of antiquity—Cleopatra VII’s—and ask what “honor” really means when the sources are Roman, i.e. biased AF, and the stakes are imperial, that is Octavian is using Cleopatra’s fall to condense all power into the hands of one person, his own. Starting with a timeline of events, Kara and Amber unpack Octavian’s propaganda about Cleopatra’s death by suicide, and Kara argues that the suicide story serves Rome far more than it serves Egypt’s last queen. Using David Graeber’s Debt as a lens, they consider the ways in which honor, debt, and violence travel together in patriarchal systems—and how those rules are gendered. Antony’s suicide reads as “honorable,” while Cleopatra’s is framed as hysterical and selfish and maternal abandonment—all the worst things a woman within patriarchy could do. They probe the politics of narratives about “honor” that trap women who rule (with nods to Hatshepsut, Nefertiti, and Zenobia). The result is a sharp, feminist read of Cleopatra’s end.Or, as Kara likes to say: Suicide my ass… he straight up killed her and lied about it.Fight me. :)Show notesDavid Graeber’s DebtCheck out our other episodes on Cleopatra:Episode #57 – Reception, Ownership, and Race: Netflix’s “Queen Cleopatra”Episode #60 – Part II: Reception, Ownership, and Race: Netflix’s “Queen Cleopatra”Episode #82 – The Death of Cleopatra: Murder or Suicide? Get full access to Ancient/Now at ancientnow.substack.com/subscribe
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How ancient societies collapsed
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Using the Corpses of Dead Kings as Power Talismen: A Case Study of the Coffin of Thutmose III
Kara and Amber unpack what Kara has described as perhaps the most consequential object of her career: the coffin used to (re)bury Thutmose III. The story behind this king’s coffin spans centuries—running from the height of the 18th Dynasty—when it was first made—through the Late Ramesside turmoil—when it was first exhumed—and into the 20th–21st Dynasties—when the coffin was opened, closed, and reopened to source gold and use the body of the king as a kind of talisman for power. This coffin provides an excellent case study to help us understand how royal burials—and royal corpses—were manipulated, remade, and redeployed as tools that manufactured social power. Kara walks us through the forensic clues on the object itself—two uraeus holes (think vulture and cobra on the mask of Tutankhamun!), layers of plaster (that means redecoration!) tool marks (scraping away all that gilding!), traces of gilding (regilding a thin layer after taking a thick layer), and multiple sets of mortise-and-tenons (as the case and lid sides get thinner and thinner!)—to show at least two major interventions before the coffin was finally cached in Deir el-Bahri 320, stripped of just about all its precious materials. During this discussion, Kara and Amber explore some of the reasons Thutmose III was resurrected as a divine ancestor by later generations of warlords (like Payankh and Herihor!), how “caretaking” and commodification coexisted, and what these acts can tell us about civil conflict, migration, and elite replacement in the late Bronze Age. This is a forensic case study that reveals object stratigraphy as power politics. Show notesFor a discussion of the ritual repair of mummies from the Deir el Bahri 320 cache, check out Afterlives of Ancient Egypt, Episode #88.For more about Thutmose III and the veneration of royal ancestors, check out Afterlives of Ancient Egypt, Episode #83.SourcesBrown, Nicholas. 2020. “Raise Me Up and Repel My Weariness! A study of the coffin of Thutmose III (CG 61014).” MDAIK 76/77: 11-35.Cooney, Kathlyn. “Surviving New Kingdom Kings’ Coffins: Restoring the Art That Was.” Arts 2025, 14(3), 57; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts14030057.Cooney, Kara. 2024. Recycling for Death: Coffin Reuse in Ancient Egypt and the Theban Royal Caches. Cairo and New York: The American University in Cairo Press. [Buy it on Amazon or on the AUCP website.] Get full access to Ancient/Now at ancientnow.substack.com/subscribe
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Feeding the Aten: Akhenaten's Offering Obsession
Akhenaten physically manifested his cult to the sun, building a capital city at a break in the cliffs that created the perfect sunrise hieroglyph on the east bank, a city filled with open air temples into which the sun’s rays could reach directly. He created no statues to represent divine solar power, no intercessor between god and king; the sun’s warmth and light could not be contained in a cult statue. To honor the sun god, Akhenaten created a simple and literal system of giving back what the sun god had given to his people: his Aten temples contained thousands of altars filled to overflowing with the bounty of his people’s produce—joints of beef, oxen heads, ducks and geese, bread loaves in all shapes and sizes, onions, garlic, beer and wine. In this episode, Kara Cooney and Amber Myers Wells dive into the overwhelming scale of the offering tables from Akhenaten’s reign and what they reveal about ritual, power, and ideology in the Amarna period. Why did Akhenaten commission thousands of offering tables for the Aten, who filled them, where did the food come from, and what does this short-lived practice tell us about the king’s vision of divine connection versus the economic and social realities of life at the new capital city of Akhetaten?This is a confusing topic with many outstanding questions; please communicate your confusion, quandaries, and ideas in the comments!Show notesFor more on the Great Aten Temple and Offering Tables, see the Amarna Project website, a treasure trove of information. Check out this image of Akhenaten offering in his great Aten Temple, as pictured in the tomb of one of his courtiers and the temple’s Chief Servant, Panehsy. For a statue fragment of Akhenaten holding his own personal offering table, see this piece at the Met! Ancient/Now is always free for everyone. If you want to help me pay Amber and Jordan what they are worth, consider becoming a paid subscriber. And thank you!SourcesCooney, Kathlyn M. 2007. The cost of death: the social and economic value of ancient Egyptian funerary art in the Ramesside period. Egyptologische Uitgaven 22. Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten.Janssen, Jac J. 1975. Commodity prices from the Ramessid period: an economic study of the village of necropolis workmen at Thebes. Leiden: E. J. Brill.Kemp, Barry. 2013. The city of Akhenaten and Nefertiti: Amarna and its people. London: Thames & Hudson.McClain, J. Brett and Kathlyn Cooney. 2005. “The daily offering meal in the ritual of Amenhotep I: an instance of the local adaptation of cult liturgy.” Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 5, 41-78. DOI: 10.1163/156921205776137963. Get full access to Ancient/Now at ancientnow.substack.com/subscribe
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Sex and Succession: Interpreting an Amarna Royal Family Scene
CW: This episode includes discussion of sexual themes, including incest and child sexual abuse. Listener discretion advised.In this episode, Kara and Amber take on one of Amarna’s most famous images—the so-called “house altar” showing Akhenaten, Nefertiti, and their three daughters beneath the Aten (Ägyptisches Museum/Neues Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Inv. no ÄM 14145). At a glance, this relief seems to show a sweet private scene of domesticity and familial affection, but taking the time to do some close-looking reveals how the scene might covey so much more. Kara unpacks how—to initiated elite eyes, at least—the piece encodes theology, court politics, sexual and reproductive power. What might Nefertiti’s unique blue crown signal about containment of solar power? Why are the girls’ bodies shown the way they are, like tiny women but with the heads of infants? And how might a palace loyalist use such an altar to telegraph succession hopes—and anxieties—without writing a word? It’s all here, encoded in the stone. Along the way Kara and Amber also explore ancient Egyptian ideas of divine conception, the harem as a political machine, why Amarna “realism” isn’t exactly realism, but an idealized magical end goal, and how royal bodies carried the burden of sustaining royal legitimacy and succession. Show notesObject entry on Google Arts & CultureFor more on the commodification of women’s and girl’s bodies, see:Episode #69 - Bodies and Power in the Ancient WorldCooney, Kathlyn M. 2025. Body power in the ancient world: patriarchal power and the commodification of women. In Thompson, Shane M. and Jessica Tomkins (eds), Understanding power in ancient Egypt and the Near East, volume I: Approaches, 104-135. Leiden; Boston: Brill. DOI: 10.1163/9789004712485_006.For more on harems in ancient Egypt, see:Episode #41 - Power and Politics in the Egyptian HaremCooney, Kathlyn M., Chloe Landis, and Turandot Shayegan 2023. The body of Egypt: how harem women connected a king with his elites. In Candelora, Danielle, Nadia Ben-Marzouk, and Kathlyn M. Cooney (eds),Ancient Egyptian society: challenging assumptions, exploring approaches, 336-348. London; New York: Routledge. DOI: 10.4324/9781003003403-31.For the Amenhotep III conception scene discussed in the episode, see:Krauss, Rolf. “Die Amarnazeitliche Familienstele Berlin 14145 Unter Besonderer Berücksichtigung von Maßordnung Und Komposition.” Jahrbuch Der Berliner Museen 33 (1991): 7–36. https://doi.org/10.2307/4125873. Get full access to Ancient/Now at ancientnow.substack.com/subscribe
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