Ancient Egypt - DK Publishing

   2021; 385 pages.  Full Title: Ancient Egypt: The Definitive Visual History.   New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Ancient History; Egypt; Non-Fiction; Reference.  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

 

    My seventh-grade “World History” teacher was Miss Stoudt.  Early in the first semester, she introduced us students to  Ancient Egypt in a rather unique way.

 

    “You can remember the Nile River by looking at your arm,” she said.  “Your shoulder is where the Nile starts, a long way south in central Africa.  Your elbow is where the great city of Thebes is,  And down here where your hand is,” she said spreading her fingers, “is the Nile delta,  the most important part of the Egyptian Empire.”

 

    Her clever demonstration sparked my interest in History then and there, and it remains strong to this day.  I owe it all to Miss Stoudt and her “Nile River arm”.  Alas, that’s the only memory of the history of ancient Egypt that I still remember from her class.  So it was high time I read a book on the subject.

 

    That's where Ancient Egypt: The Definitive Visual History comes in.

 

What’s To Like...

    Ancient Egypt is divided into seven historical eras, and covers a total of 5,395 years.  Event-wise, it starts with an early settlement in lower Egypt around 5,000 BCE, and ends when Egypt is reduced to a mere province in the Roman Empire, with most of its inhabitants converted to Christianity and its gods, such as Horus, depicted in statues as wearing the armor of Roman soldiers.

 

    Structurally, each entry is a 2-page spread, which contains plenty of pictures of Egyptian archaeological discoveries plus a brief summary of whatever topic is being addressed.  Frankly, I was blown away by the number of relics we have of ancient Egypt, many of which are inscribed with lengthy discourses in hieroglyphics, and whose translations are available to historians wanting to learn about Egypt’s past, which goes back more than 7,000 years.

 

    I really liked the “flow” to the book.  All of the 30 or so dynasties are covered to some extent, based on how many relics and ruins remain that commemorate a given ruler.  That means lots of dates and names are given in the book, but it never got tedious because Ancient Egypt also presents lots of aspects of the everyday life for both peasant and pharaoh.  Those "ordinary" topics include:

 

    the layouts of ancient Egyptian bathrooms,

    the partaking of beer and wine (see below),

    board games,

    ancient graffiti,

    how to make mud bricks,

    family life and pets (see below),

    the first fiction novels, including The Tale of Sinuhe (which you can purchase at Amazon) and other bestsellers which were written more than 3,000 years ago.

 

    Both the quality and quantity of the hieroglyphics that have survived the ages are staggering.  I was fascinated by how many photographs of these symbols were included in the book.  One of the final entries covers the Rosetta Stone, an amazing find which allows us to understand and translate the Egyptian pictographs.  It can be argued that it is the greatest archaeological relic ever unearthed.

 

    Two of the most important words I learned thanks to the Rosetta Stone are:

“ka”: the spiritual life force in all humans, and the reason all those tombs and pyramids were built

“maat”: the cosmic order to the world, or in other word, the will of the gods, and thereby the justification of any actions that a pharaoh might take.

 

    There are zero cusswords in the book, which is what I’d expect from a scholarly historical treatise.  Amazon lists both formats as being 400 pages long, but the text ends on page 305, with lots of goodies after that, such as: tables (rulers, deities, sites), glossary, and index.  The author is listed as “DK Publishing”, which is the standard practice for the books they put out, but if you check inside, you’ll find that the text was written by Steven Snape, who, I gather, is no relation to Severus Snape, a renowned professor at Hogwarts.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.8/5 based on 311 ratings and 82 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.42/5 based on 53 ratings and 12 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    For every Egyptian, whether rich or poor, bread was the staple diet and seems to have been eaten at every meal.  It was made from Egypt’s abundant supply of emmer wheat and sometimes barley.  State workers were often paid in bread and sometimes in grain, which suggests that bread was not just made by official bakers, but also by ordinary people in their homes.

    Beer, which was made from the same basic ingredients as bread, was also widely available.  It was produced by both large-scale specialists and local brewers.  Most Egyptian beer was probably quite low in alcohol content, and it seems to have been drunk in large quantities.  (pg. 116)

 

    Egypt has often been claimed as the original home of the household cat.  They were probably domesticated from the Middle Kingdom onward, as images of them do not appear in Old Kingdom reliefs, but wild species are known from much earlier.  The Egyptian word for cat, miw, is certainly derived from the sound that they make.  During the New Kingdom, cats were shown as pets in the tombs of the upper classes, especially with women.  Unlike dogs, cats were rarely given personal names, but there were exceptions.  One cat, known as “The Pleasant One,” is depicted in the tomb of Puiemre, at Thebes.  (pg. 274)

 

Kindle Details…

    Ancient Egypt sells for $19.99 at Amazon at present.  DK Publishing offers what seems to be hundreds of other reference books (I didn’t even try to count them all), with prices mostly ranging from $1.99 to $19.99.

 

“If you have eaten three loaves of bread and drunk two jugs of beer and your belly is still hungry, restrain it!” (Ancient Egyptian Wisdom Text)  (pg. 117)

    The only gripes I have about Ancient Egypt involve the Kindle format.

 

    Be aware that, in order to convert from the hardcover to ebook format, DK Publishing chose to scan each page.  That means you can’t highlight any of the text, the index entries don’t link to anything, and worst of all, the ebook eats up a major chunk of your Kindle storage capacity.

 

    Look it up at Amazon: the size for this ebook is a whopping 232,625 KB.  Now compare it to some text-only ebook on your Kindle, where the typical file size is 1,000 to 10,000 KB.  That means that this book is the equivalent of 23 to 232 “text-only” ebooks.

 

    To be fair, the text could not easily be done apart from the scanning due to the clever placement of the many images.  And DK Publishing does helpfully point out that tapping twice on your Kindle screen automatically expands the page image to a readable font size.  It took a bit of finagling, but eventually I hit upon a method that visually worked for me.  You will too.

 

    Finally, I must note that whoever at DK Publishing did the Kindle-version blurb, got the subtitle of the book wrong.  The correct subtitle, as shown in the cover mage above, is “The Definitive Visual History”, the Kindle page erroneously calls it “The Definitive Illustrated History”.  C’mon, dude, you had one job.

 

    But let’s be clear: Ancient Egypt is a fantastic effort, with both the text and the pictures being simply jaw-dropping in content.  I highly recommend this book to all history buffs, but do yourself a favor and shell out the added bucks for the Hardcover version, not the ebook.

 

    9 Stars.  Etymology note: In common parlance, the word “graffiti” can be both singular and plural.  The one exception is when it involves archaeology, when the Italian-based word “graffito” is then correct.  Kudos to the writers and editors of Ancient Egypt for getting this right.  English is a goofy language.

Dead Men's Hearts - Aaron Elkins

   1994; 229 pages.  Book 8 (out of 18) in the “Gideon Oliver Mysteries” series.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : International Mystery & Crime; Egypt; Whodunit; Forensic Anthropology.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

 

    Gideon Oliver is going to be in a movie!!

 

    Well, kinda.  It would be more accurate to call it a documentary, all about ancient Egypt, and Gideon will be just one of several hand-picked “experts” speaking briefly on something very old and very archaeological.  Since Gideon is nicknamed “the Skeleton Detective”, you can pretty much figure what his relic is going to be.

 

    But hey, it does come with a perk – an all-expenses-paid weeklong trip up and down the Nile, and his wife Julie gets to come along for free as well.

 

    So kick back and enjoy things, Gideon.  All you need to do is act like you’re an expert and memorize your lines.  What are the odds that you’ll actually need to use the skills of your profession – a forensic anthropologist – for anything?

 

What’s To Like...

    I liked the idea of making the protagonist a forensic anthropologist.  It means there will be emphasis on both medical science (“forensic”) and history/archaeology (“anthropology”).  The storyline does not disappoint in this regard, it was fun to see Gideon applying the scientific method in order when analyzing both recent and ancient skeletons.

 

    The main murder-mystery case for Gideon to solve doesn’t occur until around 40%-Kindle, and doesn’t even involve a skeleton, but there are several relics and miscellaneous bones that seem to jump from one place to another on their own volition.

 

    I appreciated that Aaron Elkins presents a balanced view of both modern-day and ancient Egypt.  Gideon – and the reader – learn the nuances of the Arab words “Inshallah” (Allah willing) and “Bukhra” (similar to the Spanish word ‘manana’, which technically means ‘tomorrow’ but often really implies ‘soon’, ‘whenever’, or even ’you may as well just forget about it’).  There was a nice feel to the leisurely cruise up the Nile, and I learned that “Cleopatras” are a common brand of Egyptian cigarettes, also how the “Law of Interconnected Monkey Business” can help you solve perplexing mysteries.

 

    It was enlightening to watch how much Gideon could determine merely by a careful study of a set of bones. Case in point: he could look at a skeleton and deduce that a 4400-year-old skeleton belonged to someone who was a scribe when he was alive.  It was very “Sherlock Holmesian”, although I also thought it was neat that, unlike Arthur Conan Doyle's famous detective, Gideon occasionally would come to embarrassingly wrong conclusions.

 

    The ending is okay, but felt a bit arbitrary.  Gideon realizes that he has no conclusive evidence of the perpetrator’s guilt, although the fact that one of the suspects is suddenly trying very hard to kill him is certainly indicative of guilt.  This makes for an exciting climax, but it also means that you (and Gideon) probably won’t solve the case before the bullets start whizzing by.  So just sit back, go sleuthing along with Gideon, and enjoy the adventure and the wonders of Egypt.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Fusty (adj.) : old-fashioned in attitude or style.

 

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.2*/5, based on 576 ratings and 58 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.97*/5, based on 1,460 ratings and 58 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    “Have you ever heard of the Deir el-Bahri cache?”

    She sighed.  “Gideon, dear, have I ever pointed out to you that you have a slightly annoying habit of starting your stories by asking me if I’ve heard of something that hardly anybody has ever heard of?  The Deir el-Bahri cache, the Menshiya, the Neiman-Marcus fragment—”

    “Many times,” he said, flopping into one of the beige armchairs, putting his feet up on the ottoman, and stretching comfortably out on his lower spine.  “It’s a pedagogical stratagem, well known to ensure listener participation in the communication process.”  (loc. 1153)

 

    Gideon winced.  Tempers were already simmering and it was just the first hour of the first morning of taping.  Making a movie, a retired Port Angeles neighbor who had worked in Hollywood had once told him, was like making sausage.  The finished product might be terrific, but you didn’t necessarily want to watch the process.  (loc. 1238)

 

Kindle Details…

    Dead Men’s Hearts sells for $6.99 right now at Amazon.  The other six books in the series cost anywhere from $1.99 to $8.99.  There are also a pair of bundles from this series, one runs $14.99 (three books); the other runs $16.99 (four books).

 

“Did you know that if you keep yogurt in a pyramid-shaped carton it just about never spoils?”  (loc. 43)

    There’s not much to grouse about in Dead Men’s Hearts.  Those who are looking for a cozy mystery will be happy to know there’s only a small amount of cussing (I counted 12 instances in the first 20% of the book), and since I’m a pedantic proofreader, I liked that I noted only one typo: “photo graph” as two words instead of one.

 

    Dead Men’s Hearts was my introduction to Aaron Elkins’ Gideon Oliver mysteries.  I don’t know if it’s one of the best books, or one of the weakest ones in the series.  The pacing felt good, the characters were well-developed, but for me the mystery itself seemed a bit humdrum.  Still, there is much to like here: plenty of wit, mystery, history, archaeology, forensic science, and Egyptology.  I plan to read more books from the series.

 

    8 Stars.  There are two more Gideon Oliver e-books sitting on my Kindle, waiting for my attention: Icy Clutches and Murder in the Queen’s Armes.  Neither one of those titles sound like they are set in Egypt, so I'm guessing Aaron Elkins likes to have Gideon travel all over the place.

Lion In The Valley - Elizabeth Peters

   1986; 418 pages.  Book 4 (out of 20) of the “Amelia Peabody” series.  New Author? : Yes.  Genre : Historical Mystery; Murder Mystery; Crime Fiction.  Overall Rating : 7*/10.

    It’s a new year, and for the husband and wife team of archaeologists, Amelia Peabody Emerson and Professor Radcliffe Emerson, that means heading back to Egypt from their home in England to explore a new pyramid – two of them, actually.

    This is going to involve crawling around in stifling, bat-infested corridors of the larger of the two pyramids, and mucking through the muddy, flooded burial chamber of the smaller one.  There’s also the challenges of the Saharan heat, the blowing sand, the omnipresent dust, and the Bedouin tribesmen roaming the nearby dunes, all the while trying in vain to keep track of their eight-year-old son, Ramses, a youngster who has a phenomenal talent for getting in trouble, getting lost, and always finding a tenable defense to justify his antics.

    Still, things can’t help but go better than last year, when the Emerson family crossed paths with the notorious “Master Criminal” (nobody knows his true name), and only survived due to some heroics by Ramses.  Surely that’s all over and forgotten now, and this year they can concentrate on the excavations.

    Yet it is a curious fact that Amelia and Radcliffe never need to go looking for trouble.  It always seems to find them.

What’s To Like...

    Lion In The Valley was my introduction to Elizabeth Peters and her Amelia Peabody Historical Mystery series.  This story is set in 1895/96 when Egypt was a British protectorate.  Amelia gets top billing, primarily because the story is written in the form of a journal, in the First Person POV, and being penned by her.  But her husband and son play equally prominent parts in the story.

    The book is a vocabularian’s delight.  Amelia writes in a flowery style, and young Ramses delights in awing adults around him with his fustian.  Wikpedia correctly terms this a “Historical Mystery”, and it was fun to see Elizabeth Peters insert real archaeologists from that time period (including Howard Carter, ho of King Tut’s Tomb fame), and real archaeological sites, such as the Dahshoor (“Dahshur” if you want to find it in Wikipedia) pyramids that our protagonists are about to dig into.

   I would classify Lion In The Valley as a Cozy Mystery.  Yes, there are two bodies to be discovered, but we aren't witness to the actual killings.  Radcliffe might let slip an occasional “damn”, but Amelia is there to nag him into eschewing such language in front of Ramses.  Amelia the diarist is also resourceful in finding tasteful words to describe her and Radcliffe’s frequent “bouts of passion”.

    There are a bunch of Arabic expressions sprinkled throughout the text, and that was a treat for me.  The ending has a couple neat twists in it, and is suitably suspenseful, but also has a WTF which makes it somewhat hard to believe.  Lion In The Valley is a standalone story, as well as part of a series.

    Elizabeth Peters is the pen name of one Barbara Mertz, who also wrote under the name of Barbara Michaels.  She received a PhD in Egyptology from the University in Chicago in 1952.  All of which means she paints a very realistic picture of life in Egypt in the 1890’s.

Kewlest New Word ...

Contumely (n) : insolent or insulting language or treatment.

Others : Gazette (as a verb); Haut Monde (n.; phrase); Syllogism (n.); Ensorcelled (v.).

Excerpts...

    As we waited for the workmen to arrive, Emerson said, “You were restless last night, Peabody.”

    “So would you have been had you been wakened hourly, as I was, by someone prowling round the tent.”

    “You talked in your sleep.”

    “Nonsense, Emerson.  I never talk in my sleep.  It is a sign of mental instability.  What did I say?”  (loc. 2646)

   “Peabody,” he said.

    “Yes, my dear Emerson?”

    “Are we surrounded by hostile Bedouin on the verge of a murderous attack?”

    “Why no, Emerson, I don’t think so.”

    “Did a shadowy figure creep into the tent, brandishing a knife?”

    “No.”

    “A mummified hand, perhaps?  Slipping through the gap between the tent wall and the canvas floor, groping for your throat?”

    “Emerson, you are particularly annoying when you try to be sarcastic.”  (loc. 3766)

Kindle Details...

    Lion In The Valley sells for $8.99 at Amazon.  The other 19 books in the series range in price from $1.99 to $9.99.   Individual books in the series are frequently offered at temporarily lower prices, usually $1.99.  Your local digital library is another good place to find copies, both in electronic and "real" formats.

 “Watch your dipthongs, Ramses.”  (loc. 547)

    There were some things that I was mildly disappointed in.

    First of all, both adult protagonists are archaeologists, so I was looking forward to digging and scraping and uncovering and cataloging.  But the storyline is virtually devoid of archaeological details.  Our heroes go off towards work, almost always get sidetracked by visitors or malefactors, and almost never find time to do the excavating they came to Egypt to do.

    The second issue is the Murder-Mystery portions.  If you’re hoping to solve the crimes alongside Amelia, you’ll be disappointed.  Things do eventually get resolved, but it doesn’t come via sleuthing, and its outcome is conveniently tailored to fit in with the personal storylines, not the crimes themselves.

    Finally, Ramses can get very annoying quite quickly with his adult-like vocabulary, convoluted lines of reasoning, and all-around obnoxiousness.  Simply put, his character isn’t believable for an 8-year-old..

    But hey, this was my introduction to Elizabeth Peters.  Lion In The Valley is an early entry, so maybe things get more believable as the series progresses.  Or maybe I haven’t yet grasped the tone and style the author is aiming for here.  That has happened before, with Ruth Downie’s Medicus series, and I eventually warmed up to her books.  We shall see.  I have at least two more Amelia Peabody books on my TBR shelf.

    7 Stars.  Add 1 star if you like Lilian Jackson Braun’s “The Cat Who ...” books.  The structure of the Historical Mystery in Lion In the Valley is very similar to that used by Ms. Braun and frankly, IMO, Elizabeth Peters does it much better.

Mourningtide - Diana Wilder

   2014; 378 pages.  Book 2 (out of 4) of the “Memphis Cycle” series, aka the “XIX Dynsaty” series.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Historical Fiction.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

    Is there any sorrow so profound as that of a parent when a son or daughter unexpectedly dies?  It can happen at any moment, no matter what the age of the child; no matter what the social status of the parent: rich or poor, peasant or powerful, young or old.  Even the ruler of an empire is not immune.

    In this case, Nakhtamun, heir to the throne and the eldest son of the Pharaoh Seti I, is ambushed and slain during an excursion into Canaan, to the north of Egypt.  Seti is far away to the south, in Nubia, when it occurs.  To boot, an inept messenger sent to inform Seti of his son’s passing, neglects to tell him, so it is weeks before he returns to the palace and learns of the tragedy.  It means he didn’t even make it to the entombment of Nakhtamun, and thus never had a chance to say his goodbyes.

    The result is a devastating grief for the Pharaoh.  But hey, there’s no time for mourning; he’s the head of a powerful kingdom, and has to soldier on with affairs of state.

    Or does he?

What’s To Like...

    Seti I is a historical figure who ruled Egypt from approximately 1290-1279 BC.  He had some notable military victories (see the Wikipedia article on him here), but not much is known about him beyond that.  So this is fertile ground for storytelling.  I assumed, based on the other Diana Wilder book I’ve read (reviewed here), that Mourningtide was going to be a Murder-Mystery, but it’s actually a pleasant piece of Historical Fiction.  Not to worry; I like both genres.

    There are only 4 discrete settings: Canaan, Memphis, Thebes, and the area around the town of the tomb-makers, Deir el Medina, but once again I liked the “feel” that the author creates for daily life, both courtly and common, in ancient Egypt.  I particularly enjoyed the portrayal of the interactions between underlings and royalty.  The Pharaoh is, after all, considered to be a god.

    The chapters are short, so you always have a good place to stop.  The Cast of Characters is now placed in the front of the book, a small but appreciated improvement over Pharaoh’s Son.  Bookmark that page; you will be using it a lot to keep track of the characters you meet.

    There’s some action at the beginning and some more close to the end, but not a lot in between.  However, this is Historical Fiction, not Action-Adventure, and the writing was good enough to keep my interest.  There aren’t very many plot twists either; it’s pretty obvious how the Seti/Djedi training thread was going to turn out from the get-go.  There is some Romance for the female readers, but this is not a romance novel, so that’s okay.

    The ending is similarly untwisty, but at one point it did put a lump in my throat.  The epilogue was both solemn and satisfying.

Excerpts...

    The man was down on the ground, curled into a tight ball, his arms shielding his head.  Seti could see blood.

    “Kill him!”

    “Stand back, all of you, or fight me!” Djedi snapped.  “Twenty against one!  And he armed only with a staff!  Were you sired by dotards, that you should fight like this?  Were you trained to arms by old women?  Or half-wits?”

    “You trained us!”  The words had come from the edge of the crowd.  (loc. 5794)

   Seti eyed the amusement in Ptahemhat’s expression and swore again.  “So I am to be saddled with you!”

    “It would seem so,” Ptahemhat said.  “His Holiness thought it shouldn’t be too difficult for you.  He says, in fact, that I have grown up to be a fine and sensible man after being such a pain in the ass as a youngster.”

    “Did he actually say that?” Seti demanded.

    “Well, words to that effect.”  (loc. 5873)

Kindle Details...

    Mourningtide sells for $3.98 at Amazon, which is the same price for each of the other three books in the series.  Diana Wilder has two other e-books available, and they, too, go for $3.98.

 “I’ve never known an ass to do anything but bray.”  (loc. 969)

    Some of the reviews at Amazon and Goodreads were critical of how Diana Wilder portrayed the female characters in Mourningtide.  They felt they weren’t “strong” enough.

    I think this is a case of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t”.  The role of women in ancient times was quite different than that of the 20^th-21^st century, and trying to instill modern-day ethics into a piece of Historical Fiction, while laudable, diminishes its believability.

    Moreover, I thought the women in Mourningtide were strong, at least in the context of the time.  Seti gets ogled by a group of them, and they’re not particularly worried whether he’ll overhear their remarks about his bod.  And when he does strike up a conversation with them, they respond as equals, not subordinates.  So personally, I thought it was done well.

    8 Stars.  Add 1 star if reading about dealing with the loss of a son or daughter resonates with you, or if you like being immersed in an ancient setting.  Subtract 1 Star if you love plot twists and/or thrills-&-spills in your readings.