Brian Muhs, The Ancient Egyptian Economy: 3000–30 BCE Cambridge University Press, 2016 ISBN: 9781316286364 During my Egyptology studies in Leiden I repeatedly followed the course in Demotic Papyrology by Brian Muhs. Repeatedly, because it took a while before the penny dropped, if ever it did. In class we read fantastical stories about Setne Khamwas, the…
Category: Reviews
Mrs. Naunakhte
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…
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…