Book Spotlight: Richfield Collection

Review of Temples, Tombs & Hieroglyphs: a popular history of ancient Egypt by Barbara Mertz .
This book is a fantastic introduction to the culture of Ancient Egypt. It is clearly written, fast-paced, and reads like a novel (the author is also a novelist!). It starts with the first glimmers of civilization, moves through the time of the pyramids, instability, and spends time discussing the heretic pharaoh, Akhenaton and his son (?) Tutankhamun. The author includes excerpts of ancient writings that have been translated from papyri, and discusses what they can tell us about life at the time. She describes the first “Egyptologists” and their discoveries and blunders. There is a lot we don’t know about Ancient Egypt, but this book is a good overview of 3000 years of Egyptian history.
This book can be found in the Richfield Circulating Collection 932 MER.
--Read and reviewed by Erica Nutzman