The Seventy Great Mysteries of Ancient Egypt

Organized as 70 short, easily digestible essays by noted scholars, this engaging and lavishly illustrated survey covers all of ancient Egypt's greatest hits, including the pyramids, hieroglyphics and mummies, along with intriguing biographical material on such pharaonic celebrities as the courageous Ramesses (whose battle of Qadesh in 1275 B.C. is the first for which we have a detailed historical record), religious reformer Akhenaten and his queen Nefertiti, lady pharaoh Hatshepsut and, of course, Cleopatra. Alongside sensational subjects like assassinations and pharaonic incest are equally interesting background articles on Egyptian prehistory, technology, religion and literature. The authors discourage the""fantasy archaeology"" behind suggestions about the extra-terrestrial or Atlantean provenance of Egyptian culture, but they include a generally indulgent, if non-committal, section on the possible concordance between Biblical stories about Egypt and the historical reality. Although written for laypeople in an accessible style, there is a fair amount of depth to the articles, which bring a wealth of archaeological, linguistic and textual evidence to bear on the controversies they explore. A few subjects, like the fecund Nile agricultural system that underlay Egypt's ascendance, receive skimpy coverage, while some of the denser pieces about the whereabouts of various pharaohs' tombs and corpses address mysteries that only an Egyptologist could relish. But the wide-ranging, skillfully written and conveniently browsable articles and the hundreds of ravishing color photos of art and architecture demonstrate anew why Egypt is holds a continuing fascination. 434 illustrations with 344 in color.