AUC Press 2016 264 pp. Hardbound $34.95 ISBN 9789774167737 Stand-up Egyptologist Koenraad Donker van Heel is at it again with a third popular book about business-minded ancient Egyptians. This time he chooses to resurrect a woman called Naunakhte who lived in the artist community of Deir el-Medina around 1150 BCE. Her village was home to…
Category: Books
The Story of Egypt
Joann Fletcher’s story of Egypt is a personal one. And she is a good storyteller. She writes expressively, making you hear the primordial Nile waters flooding and the evening fires in the desert crackling. Her story is inevitably a history of ancient Egypt, divided in the all too well-known kingdoms and dynasties, substituted by alliterative chapter names…
Carnarvon and the search for Tutankhamun
In the summer of 2011, I had the pleasure to visit Highclere Castle with a tour group I was guiding together with a friend and fellow Egyptologist from the Huis van Horus foundation. Upon arrival I was impressed by its rolling lawns (lazy pheasants included), charming garden temple and majestic façade reminiscent of London’s Houses of Parliament….
Mrs. Tsenhor
Sometimes in life, things happen at the right moment. When Koen Donker van Heel encouraged me to start my own business, I hadn’t read his new book Mrs. Tsenhor yet, which was published in 2014 by the always lovely AUC Press (hardcover, nice design, sparkling white pages). Now that I have, I am affirmed in…
Agatha Christie in Egypt and the Near East
Agatha Christie is world-renowned for her crime writing. Her countless mystery stories are packed with locked rooms, cracked mirrors and unreliable clocks. Trains, boats and islands provide the closed systems in which one of the characters is inevitably the murderer. Card games, hunting parties and casual vacations provide the perfect backdrop for an intricate series…
J.H. Insinger: A Dutchman in Egypt
In the 19th century, if you were well-to-do and suffering from lung disease such as tuberculosis, your best option was to reside in the agreeable dry climate of Egypt. Lady Lucie Duff Gordon (the 19th century authoress, not to be confused with the 20th century fashion designer and Titanic survivor) was among those who traded…
Akhenaten: Dweller in Truth
Naguib Mahfouz is the well-known author of The Cairo Trilogy. Written in the lively coffee houses of the Khan el-Khalili bazaar, his stories are full of colourful characters. So far, he is the only Nobel Prize winner for Arabic literature. But besides the lives he describes in the alleys of modern Cairo, he wrote a small…