The Story of Egypt: The Civilization that Shaped the World

In this broad survey targeted to casual readers, British Egyptologist Fletcher (Cleopatra the Great) explains how the ancient Egyptian civilization laid the foundations for the modern world. To contemporary sensibilities, the Egyptians can seem inordinately obsessed with the afterlife, and one could be forgiven for believing that their most impressive achievements are their own bodies’ repositories, often protected by ingenious and elaborate security measures regularly replicated in what Fletcher dismisses as “bad Hollywood films.” Tombs do feature prominently throughout, but Fletcher takes pains to illuminate the more quotidian concerns of her subjects, such as the proliferation of graffiti polluting said funerary monuments, about which ancient public servants groused. Though often pictured as existing in splendid isolation, the Egyptians—literate, numerate, spiritual, and philosophical—carried on rich intellectual and commercial relations, as well as military campaigns, with such contemporaries as Greece, Nubia, and Persia. Ptolemy IV, who styled himself a “New Dionysos,” traded extensively with Rome, a connection that would end in disaster. Fletcher’s telling encompasses pharaohs and their royal retinue as well as “weavers, artists, butchers and bakers, brewers, florists and perfume-makers.” Readers already interested in mummies, pyramids, and hieroglyphics will appreciate Fletcher’s depth and breadth of knowledge about the civilization that created them. Agent: Jason Bartholomew, Hodder & Stoughton (U.K.). (Aug.)