The Tomb-Builders of the Pharaohs Reviews

The British Museum Concise Introduction to Ancient Egypt provides a lively and accessible introduction to ancient Egyptian life and culture set in the specific geography of the land and its river, the Nile, within the historical framework of the dynastic sequence. The nearly independent chapters provide a comprehensive and entertaining survey of ancient Egypt and its rich and well-documented culture. The principal topics incorporate significant older as well as more recent scholarship, spiced with ideas based on the author’s long experience in the study of ancient Egypt, making stimulating and thought-provoking reading. In addition to individual chapter bibliographies there is a general bibliography, an annotated list of important museum collections, a king list with a selected set of illustrated royal cartouches, and a general index. Highlights include: • Lively overviews distilled from the latest discoveries and research • Maps, plans, reconstruction drawings, chronologies, site lists and recommendations for further reading • Hundreds of color and black-and-white illustrations

This new study, drawing on the latest research, tells the story of the decline and fall of the pharaoh Akhenaten’s religious revolution in the fourteenth century bc. Beginning at the regime’s high-point in his Year 12, it traces the subsequent collapse that saw the deaths of many of the king’s loved ones, his attempts to guarantee the revolution through co-rulers, and the last frenzied assault on the god Amun. The book then outlines the events of the subsequent five decades that saw the extinction of the royal line, an attempt to place a foreigner on Egypt’s throne, and the accession of three army officers in turn. Among its conclusions are that the mother of Tutankhamun was none other than Nefertiti, and that the queen was joint-pharaoh in turn with both her husband Akhenaten and her son. As such, she was herself instrumental in beginning the return to orthodoxy, undoing her erstwhile husband’s life-work before her own mysterious disappearance.