Toby Wilkinson

Turns out Scribes book shop in Dunedin is a great place for all your obscure reading needs.

I don't actually know much about ancient Egypt, despite its fame. This book gave me a window into the ancient civilisation, although for every small grain of knowledge we have it seems there is so much more we don't know.

It's fascinating to see what the Egyptians wrote (those few who could write of course). Most of the pieces are pretty short, I suppose due to the limits of what can reasonably carved into stone. My favourite was the adoption of Nitiqret, an interesting look into the politics of the day. Although I do wonder what she did with all that bread!… (mais)

As others have mentioned, the title of this book is a little misleading. I thought I'd be learning about the average life of an ancient Egyptian, whereas what I actually got was a hundred short biographies of ancient Egyptian individuals. It's not very deep and I didn't find it particularly engaging, but it did serve as a decent re-cap to reinforce my more in-depth learnings about ancient Egypt.

What I most appreciated was the inclusion of names of the subjects' family members and sometimes even pets. I feel like these are too often forgotten.… (mais)

Focusing primarily on the period between 1822 and Champollion's breakthrough with the Rosetta stone, and 1922 when Howard Carter discovered Tutanhkamen's tomb, this book charts the development and practice of archaeology in Egypt. While I knew about some of the key moments, this book presented Egyptology in the 19th century as practised and developed by a much more broader range of people than I was aware of—some surprisingly brilliant and forward-thinking, others just out for what they could personally grab and benefit from. A good read.… (mais)