Ancient Egypt: A beginner's guide
The big picture
Websites
The Ancient Egypt Site
www.ancient-egypt.org
Excellent website created by a Belgian Egyptologist (in very good
English). It covers history, monuments and sites, and language –
the latter being particularly thorough (there is even a transliteration
font that you can download). There is also a bibliography and an extensive
section about ancient Egypt on the internet, in the movies, in museums
and at universities.
Digital Egypt for Universities
www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk
Aimed at university staff and students but also anyone interested
in the history of ancient Egypt. Offers a wide range of topics – from
architecture, art, medicine and astronomy to religion, literature and
cultural, museum and gender studies. Based on the collection at the Petrie
Museum of Egyptian Archaeology at University College London, it focuses
on theme, place and time, rather than being a structured learning course,
and provides a series of reconstructions and maps. It can occasionally
be confusing, but persevere: there's much to savour here.
Index of Egyptian History
www.friesian.com/notes/oldking.htm
Huge amount of information with an academic bent but still very accessible.
Has over 30 sections, with articles on each of the dynasties.
Ancient Egypt: The British Museum
www.ancientegypt.co.uk/menu.html
An educational site that is as interesting to adults as to children.
Lavishly illustrated from the museum's own collection, it is divided into
10 'chapters': Egyptian life, geography, gods & goddesses, mummification,
pharaoh, pyramids, temples, time, trades, writing. There is also information
for teachers on how to use the site in the classroom.
Egypt in the Old Kingdom
www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/
An online tour that features objects from the period in the British
Museum's collection, including remains of the fabric of the early royal
pyramids, architectural elements and sculpture from the tombs of the officials
who ran the country, and a papyrus from one of the most important administrative
archives of the period.
Mark Millmore's Ancient Egypt
www.eyelid.co.uk/
Enthusiast's site that is particularly good on illustrating the period,
including computer-generated reconstructions of some of the temples and
pyramids. You can even, using the site's hieroglyphic translator, send
friends their names in hieroglyphs as e-cards.
Akhet Egyptology
www.akhet.co.uk
Very full website created by a Scottish enthusiast. Includes a 'clickable
mummy', where you will find information on various aspects of mummification.
Egyptian History
www.nemo.nu/ibisportal/0egyptintro/2aegypt/index.htm
Substantial website that is a nightmare to navigate. But don't give
up: there is a great deal of interesting information and great illustrations.
The House of Ptolemy
www.houseofptolemy.org/
A portal site with hundreds of links, this concentrates on the Ptolemies
and their world, from 331 to 30 BC, plus information on the Roman and
Byzantine rule that followed.
Books
Ancient Egyptians: The kingdom of the pharaohs brought to life
by Anton Gill (HarperCollins Entertainment, 2003) £20
Based on the Channel 4 series, this book, as well as forming a stand-alone
guide to ancient Egypt, focuses on four very specific stories that give
a full flavour of what daily life was like then. It also goes behind the
scenes to show how the series was made and the revelations about ancient
Egypt that came to light through this.
You can read an extract
from Ancient Egyptians: The kingdom of the pharaohs brought to
life.
The Mammoth Book of How It Happened: Ancient Egypt, edited by
Jon E Lewis (Robinson, 2003) £7.99
Excellent – and inexpensive – anthology of first-hand views
of the ancient civilisation from primary sources. They reveal the Egyptians'
everyday labours, quarrels and love affairs, marriage contracts and trials
for tomb robbers, together with eyewitness insights into great historical
moments.
The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Egypt edited by Bill Manley
(Penguin, 1996) £10.99
This historical atlas charts the progress of Egyptian civilisation from
early times, through the expansion of the empire, the construction of
the pyramids, the decline culminating in the Persian occupation, to the
rise of the Ptolemies and the absorption into the Roman empire.
The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, edited by Ian Shaw (Oxford
University Press, 2003) £10.99
Covering 700,000 years of ancient Egypt, from the Stone Age to the Roman
conquest, subjects range from the changing nature of life and death in
the Nile valley to some of the earliest masterpieces of art, architecture
and literature in the ancient world.
The British Museum Dictionary of Ancient Egypt by Ian Shaw and
Paul Nicholson (British Museum Press, new ed 2002) £14.99
An illustrated pocket-sized dictionary that provides clear explanations
and descriptions of the important ideas, events and personalities throughout
4,000 years of Egyptian civilisation. More than 600 extensively cross-referenced
and comprehensively indexed A-Z entries provide detailed information on
all aspects of ancient Egypt and Nubia during the pharaonic and Graeco-Roman
periods.
Fighting Pharaohs: Weapons and warfare in ancient Egypt by Robert
B Partridge (Peartree Publishing, 2003). US edition only; may be available
from online bookshops.
The history and description of weapons and warfare and the military activities
of the pharaohs, from the earliest dynastic times until the Roman period.
The major campaigns of the great warrior pharaohs of the New Kingdom,
such as Thutmose III and Ramesses II, are covered in detail.
The Prehistory of Egypt: From the first Egyptians to the first pharaohs
by Béatrix Midant-Reynes, translated by Ian Shaw (Blackwell, 1999)
£17.99
The history of the Nile valley from the earliest hominid settlement around
700,000 BC to the beginnings of dynastic Egypt at the end of the fourth
millennium BC. The book focuses primarily on the 15 millennia from 18,000
to 3,000 BC, when different cultures can be identified, and the earliest
forms of agriculture are traced with some detail.
Early Dynastic Egypt by Toby A H Wilkinson (Routledge, 2001) £17.99
This book spans the five centuries preceding the construction of the Great
Pyramid at Giza. The formative period of ancient Egyptian civilisation,
it witnessed the creation of a distinctive culture that was to endure
for 3,000 years. The book examines the background to that great achievement,
the mechanisms by which it was accomplished, and the character of life
in the Nile valley during the first 500 years of pharaonic rule.
Egypt's Legacy: The archetypes of Western civilization 3000-30 BC
by Michael Rice (Routledge, 2003) £18.99
People today continue to wonder and marvel at the majesty of Egyptian
art and architecture. This book sets out to recover the sense of wonder
that the Egyptians themselves felt as they contemplated the world in which
they lived, and the way they expressed that wonder in religion, art and
literature. It traces the story of Egyptian civilisation from its emergence
in the third millennium BC to its transformation following the Macedonian
conquest in 30 BC.
Finally, an easy and enjoyable way of learning about ancient Egypt and its archaeology is to read the series of detective novels featuring turn-of-the-century Egyptologist Amelia Peabody, written by Elizabeth Peters (who has a doctorate in Egyptology) and published in hardback and paperback by Constable & Robinson. The series, which begins with Crocodile on the Sandbank, has reached its 16th entry: Children of the Storm. Check out Another Shirt Ruined, the official Amelia Peabody page, for more information (read the books to understand the page's title!).
