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: Reviews
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…
The Egyptian Museum in Turin
Visiting Turin last summer, I had the opportunity to see the splendidly rebuilt Museo Egizio, now directed by Leiden’s old friend Dr Christian Greco. The contrast with the museum as I had seen it several years ago, with its still partially 19th century design, could not have been bigger. Turin houses one of the most beautiful…
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…
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…