Book Reviews

Submitted by kemetadmin on Wed, 07/25/2012 - 11:20pm

Good things can come in small packages. Lush photographs and full color make this short book worth the money. While Hayes suggests this introduction to ancient Egypt is also for adults, its simplistic tone is better suited to children -- as a first introduction, especially for an intermediate young reader, The Egyptians is a wonderful place to start.

Submitted by kemetadmin on Wed, 07/25/2012 - 11:17pm

One of my biggest disappointments getting into the Egyptological community (though, it can be safely said, there really may not be such a thing) was that a number of otherwise very good books went quickly out of date because of the pace at which we learn new things about Egypt; the second was the seeming lack of any females in the field.

Submitted by kemetadmin on Wed, 07/25/2012 - 11:16pm

"Man fears time, but time fears the pyramids," begins a modern Egyptian proverb. Even to the last millennia of the Kemetic culture, the stone "houses of eternity" left as legacies by ephemeral god-kings were a puzzlement, an exhibition of unexplained majesty. In all periods of later Kemetic history, it was high compliment and the ultimate reverence to be able to compare oneself to "the first time" when Kemet's splendor had yet been untouched by outside forces such as invasion and international diplomacy.

Submitted by kemetadmin on Wed, 07/25/2012 - 11:15pm

A Dictionary of Ancient Egypt was written by a woman named Margaret Bunson. Maragaret Bunson is an art history professor with a "lifelong interest in Egypt," and she did all her own illustration work instead of using copies of extant art like most Egyptological resources do, so I didn't hold this book up to the standards that I would, say, something from Yale University Press; though it was published by Oxford University Press...

Submitted by kemetadmin on Wed, 07/25/2012 - 11:11pm

This wonderfully illustrated little book brought tears to my eyes the first time I saw it. Carol Greger's done a marvelous job weaving together the separate strands of the Iunu (Heliopolis) Creation Myths, from the rising of Tem (called "Atum" here) from the Nun, to the creation of living beings, Netjer and earth.

Reviews:

The Egyptians

Red Land, Black Land: Daily Life in Ancient Egypt

Pharaohs and Pyramids: A Guide Through Old Kindom Egypt

A Dictionary of Ancient Egypt

Cry of the Benu Bird: An Egyptian Creation Story // Tutankhamen's Gift