00014533

932

In Egyptian Life, by John Guy, the reader is presented with an overview of ancient Egypt, its traditions and customs. The book is arranged in a fairly simple way with the table of contents in the front cover and the index in the back. The book itself is small in size with multiple images on each two-page spread including artifacts such as a head rest, a senet game board, jewelry, and photographs of Abu Simbel, the Great Pyramid, and the Temple of Karnak. Guy opens the book with a general introduction, “Who were the Ancient Egyptians?”. I really liked this section because he places the Egyptian civilization in the overall context of this earliest of periods, with Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and the Yellow River Valley of China. Other sections include “Food and Drink”, “Art and Architecture”, “War and Weaponry”, and “Religion”. Each section is fairly detailed with a general description of the topic and then captions accompanying each image or photograph. Most of the text is easy to understand and readers can choose to read all or only some of the captions. The section that is confusing to me is the “Did you know?” at the end, which covers specific details about the moving of Abu Simbel, aromatherapy in ancient Egypt, and the concept of zero as used by the Egyptians. Why not simply include this with the rest? At any rate, this is a very thorough introduction to ancient Egypt that should appeal to readers young and old. Though currently residing in my six year old son’s room, it was previously part of my classroom collection for my ninth grade history class. I would definitely recommend this book. ( )

A resource pertaining to life in ancient Egypt. ( )