Ancient Egypt: A beginner's guide
Investigating the ancient Egyptians
Websites
Tutankhamun: Anatomy of an excavation
www.ashmolean.org/gri/4tut.html
The complete records of Howard Carter's excavation of the tomb of Tutankhamun.
Virtual Kahun
http://kahun.man.ac.uk/intro.htm
The website of a joint project between the Manchester
Museum and the Petrie Museum of Egyptian
Archaeology. This combines excavations carried out at Kahun –
the town occupied by the people who actually built the pyramids –
by William Flinders Petrie, primarily in the late 19th century, and a
large-scale survey of the site carried out by the Royal Ontario Museum
in the 1990s. Visitors can explore all the buildings in the town as they
may have been on the day Kahun was inexplicably deserted almost 4,000
years ago, and many of the artefacts can be seen and 'handled'.
Books
The Experience of Ancient Egypt by Rosalie David (Routledge, 2000)
£47.50
Explains how Egyptologists have reached such a sophisticated level of
understanding by telling the history of their discipline. It traces Egyptology
from its classical roots, through the painstaking process of deciphering
Egyptian hieroglyphs in the 18th and 19th centuries, to up-to-date bio-medical
and archaeological techniques in the late 1990s, never forgetting how
time has proved that it is impossible to deliver the absolute about ancient
Egypt.
Consuming Ancient Egypt by Sally MacDonald and Michael Rice (UCL
Press, 2003) £25
Examines the influence of ancient Egypt on the everyday lives of people,
of all ages, throughout the world. It looks at the Egypt that the tourist
sees, Egypt in film and Egypt as the inspiration for opera. It asks why
so many books are published each year on Egyptological subjects at all
levels. It then considers the ways in which ancient Egypt interacts with
the living world, in architecture, museum-going, the acquisition of souvenirs
and reproductions, design and the perpetual appeal of the mummy. Finally,
the significance of Egypt as an adjunct to (and frequently the subject
of) marketing in the consumer society is examined.
