As usual, I find myself in the middle of a hot summer with little energy to do much except read, and I would suggest these eleven books are likely to not only pass time but to inspire the thoughts of the reader back into days of drifting sand and elegance on the Nile.
10. Egypt by H.H. Powers
This 1924 guidebook is written by a gentleman with all the graciousness a cynic could muster, a cynic, however, with a good sense of Egyptian art. The travel to Cairo and down the Nile is met with a lingering disdain of mankind and a slightly quirky way of viewing the sites. I would have put this book higher on this list, except it may be difficult for readers to find.
9. Pyramids and Progress
With this 1900 book, the author takes the reader on an elegant journey around Egypt, including the meeting of some of the era's great Egyptologists, especially Sir Flinders Petrie, whose good graces opened the door to worthy events and places of the day for the author. This book would also be higher on the list, except it will be hard to find.
8. Jewels of the Pharaohs
This is the late Cyril Aldred's 1978 view into the Pharaonic tradition of royal jewels created for the king and elite. Here, the author has created a short book with half the volume devoted to coloured pictures of the best of ancient Egyptian jewelry.
Ancient Lives will not be an easy book to enter, as it took me a few chapters before I was hooked by one of the finest tellings of ancient lives of a privileged class of artisans from the ancient village of the royal tomb builders. The book is composed of thousands of documents found at that site and displaying all the ancient villagers' talents, trials, and responsibilities they possessed to the living and the dead.
6. The Life and Times of Akhnaton
This classic publication by the late Arthur Weigall, who excavated a famous tomb, and was present in the Valley of Kings during important discoveries at the beginning of the last century and is a must-read for anyone interested in these discoveries. Especially impressive is the author's descriptions of the activities that took place in the Valley of Kings tomb 55 in ancient times.
5. X-raying the Pharaohs
This short book is based on a project in the 1970s to X-ray all the royal mummies and virtually every other mummy in the Cairo Museum. The book is filled with many of the finds produced by the X-rays, including the position of King Amenhotep I's arms and a bead girdle around the king's waist.
4. Akhenaten and Nefertiti
This is the second book on this list for the late Cyril Aldred, who writes here about the heretic and his beautiful queen, Nefertiti. This is not a story as much as it is an examination of 175 surviving works of art of the Amarna period in various museums.
The late Egyptologist Walter Emery had the experience of some of the great finds of Egypt's shadowy Archaic period at the beginning of dynastic history. The volume is filled with exceptional black and white pictures that clearly demonstrate the author's words and remarkable discoveries.
2. Unwrapping a Mummy
This marvelous short book is on the discovery of the remains of a notable priest whose mummy was discovered a century ago at Deir el Bahri. Unfortunately, the priest's mummy deteriorated so much that it was decided to unwrap him; this represents one of the last times in modern history that an Egyptian mummy was unwrapped.
1. Ancient Egypt: The Great Discoveries
I loved the format of the book, which presents the great archaeological finds from ancient Egypt according to their date of discovery. The book is uncomplicated and filled with lots of coloured pictures, including some finds which may be new to the reader.
Tutankhamen: The Untold Story
This is the late Thomas Hoving's 1978 best seller of an unbelievable tale of Tutankhamun's treasures and the covetous nature of the excavation of the boy king's tomb. The artifacts from Tutankhamun's tomb were kept together for Egypt's national collection in Cairo, but did a number of them end up outside Egypt?
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