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A Year in the Life of Ancient Egypt
Based on years of prestigious academic work, Professor Rosalie David cleverly presents every aspect of life in ancient Egypt through the lives of various characters, all based on mummies from the Manchester Museum whom Professor Rosalie David has led the study of. Characters hail from all walks of life, including royalty, nobles, officials, craftsmen and peasants, allowing us an insight into absolutely every aspect of everyday, ritual and religious life in ancient Egypt.
The book provides an overview of the many dynasties and kingdoms of ancient Egypt before beginning to tell the story of the lives of one family. All three seasons of inundation, planting and growing, and harvesting are covered as well as all ritual and religious events, including birth and death. The book is extremely easy to read and digest, however, the attention to detail and the vivid picture of life which we are able to build makes it clear that this book has been written by one of the leading authorities in Egyptology and mummy research.
The mummies are currently on a tour of the US titled ‘Mummies of the World 2’ and will return to Manchester following this tour.
The book provides an overview of the many dynasties and kingdoms of ancient Egypt before beginning to tell the story of the lives of one family. All three seasons of inundation, planting and growing, and harvesting are covered as well as all ritual and religious events, including birth and death. The book is extremely easy to read and digest, however, the attention to detail and the vivid picture of life which we are able to build makes it clear that this book has been written by one of the leading authorities in Egyptology and mummy research.
The mummies are currently on a tour of the US titled ‘Mummies of the World 2’ and will return to Manchester following this tour.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published April 16, 2015
117 people are currently reading
102 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 1, 2018
Although this isn’t a bad book, I can’t say I enjoyed it too much. The reasons for that are threefold. First, the title is rather misleading. It gives the impression that the reader will be given a tour of daily life for ancient Egyptians over the course of a chronological year. Whilst the author does introduce a fictional family (why not use a real one?) following their daily lives over a chronological year barely features at all. For the vast majority of the book, the author speaks in general terms about ancient Egyptian society as a whole, and approaches topics thematically with chapters on medicine, education, religion and so forth; and everything to do with these topics is dumped in that one chapter, instead of being told to us in a chronological year format. So instead of having the chapters cover a whole year and in each one we learn what agricultural activities are going on at the appropriate time, we learn everything there is to know about fictional father Khary’s agricultural estates in one go in the first chapter which is on agriculture.
Second, since the format of the book does not follow what the title promises, and instead tackles the subject thematically, it comes off as just another overview of ancient Egyptian society and culture. Most overviews of ancient Egypt open by describing the landscape and agricultural work and then progress to complex cultural concepts in later chapters – just like this book does. And I’ve read countless of them, all following the same format and providing pretty much the same experience. I know it’s not the author’s fault that I’m an avid reader, but I expected this book to take a fresh approach, at least, since the title led me to believe we would be following ordinary Egyptians over the course of one calendar year – rather than examining by theme and taking a look at the entirety of the populace.
Third, I can’t credit this book too much, from a professional point of view. The author includes several points that have long since been disproved and discarded by the archaeological community – and not just in the past five years, not even in the past ten years – but over 30 years ago. One of them is the Heiress Theory. In the mid-20th century this was the proposition that whilst male kings held the monarchy of ancient Egypt, it was only passed down through the royal women. Thus, a king would have to marry his own sister and make her queen in order to legitimise his rule, and his preferred heirs were her children. But this was widely discredited in the 1980s; the evidence is conclusive that not all kings were born of the primary queen, and nor were all primary queens the sister of a king. Another long-outdated hypothesis that the book repeats is that Thutmose III despised his step-mother Hatshepsut for usurping his throne. Again, this was suggested to be the case in mid-20th century archaeology, but the discovery that the erasure of Hatshepsut’s monuments as monarch only took place at the end of Thutmose III’s long rule re-wrote the proposed scenario. His actions are hardly ones of impulsive, hate-filled resentment. Another hint that David may have been reading some very old and outdated publications during her research is the fact that Hatshepsut is described in the text as having “briefly usurped” Thutmose III. Again, mid-20th century literature tended to diminish both the length (21 years) and importance of Hatshepsut's reign, but modern biographies of the queen cast doubt on the objectivity of earlier writers. In any case, the fact that a book published in 2015 included not one but two extremely old and disproven hypotheses sends up a red flag to me that the author relied on outdated works in her research.
6 out of 10
Second, since the format of the book does not follow what the title promises, and instead tackles the subject thematically, it comes off as just another overview of ancient Egyptian society and culture. Most overviews of ancient Egypt open by describing the landscape and agricultural work and then progress to complex cultural concepts in later chapters – just like this book does. And I’ve read countless of them, all following the same format and providing pretty much the same experience. I know it’s not the author’s fault that I’m an avid reader, but I expected this book to take a fresh approach, at least, since the title led me to believe we would be following ordinary Egyptians over the course of one calendar year – rather than examining by theme and taking a look at the entirety of the populace.
Third, I can’t credit this book too much, from a professional point of view. The author includes several points that have long since been disproved and discarded by the archaeological community – and not just in the past five years, not even in the past ten years – but over 30 years ago. One of them is the Heiress Theory. In the mid-20th century this was the proposition that whilst male kings held the monarchy of ancient Egypt, it was only passed down through the royal women. Thus, a king would have to marry his own sister and make her queen in order to legitimise his rule, and his preferred heirs were her children. But this was widely discredited in the 1980s; the evidence is conclusive that not all kings were born of the primary queen, and nor were all primary queens the sister of a king. Another long-outdated hypothesis that the book repeats is that Thutmose III despised his step-mother Hatshepsut for usurping his throne. Again, this was suggested to be the case in mid-20th century archaeology, but the discovery that the erasure of Hatshepsut’s monuments as monarch only took place at the end of Thutmose III’s long rule re-wrote the proposed scenario. His actions are hardly ones of impulsive, hate-filled resentment. Another hint that David may have been reading some very old and outdated publications during her research is the fact that Hatshepsut is described in the text as having “briefly usurped” Thutmose III. Again, mid-20th century literature tended to diminish both the length (21 years) and importance of Hatshepsut's reign, but modern biographies of the queen cast doubt on the objectivity of earlier writers. In any case, the fact that a book published in 2015 included not one but two extremely old and disproven hypotheses sends up a red flag to me that the author relied on outdated works in her research.
6 out of 10
November 8, 2023
A Year in the Life of Ancient Egypt by Rosalie David takes an overview look of Ancient Egypt’s customs and lifestyles. I figured it would be like day-to-day things, and David does a bit of that with a fictionalised family based on real mummies at a museum with which she works, but it’s mostly a more general route, especially when it describes certain rituals and tools from one period before hopping over into a different dynasty.
She clearly is knowledgeable on the topic, and it’s a deep dive a little further than what people are generally aware of (funerary customs), moving to topics like what doctors did, or soldiers, or lawyers, using her fictionalised family as a stand-in for each position to ground the reading.
This is a Pen and Sword publication, and I was pleasantly surprised that it mostly avoided the litany of errors that usually clogs even the best intentioned of its works—the only one I can really think of is I believe someone went through and tried to fix something by replacing all instances of “or” with “om” because there were several examples of that (like “comstack” for cornstack or “tom” for “torn”).
The colour pictures really help with the text, too; usually books publish in black and white, and there’s something criminal about transforming the lush, vibrant beauty of relics that have managed to retain their paint all these millennia into black and white lifeless renderings.
She clearly is knowledgeable on the topic, and it’s a deep dive a little further than what people are generally aware of (funerary customs), moving to topics like what doctors did, or soldiers, or lawyers, using her fictionalised family as a stand-in for each position to ground the reading.
This is a Pen and Sword publication, and I was pleasantly surprised that it mostly avoided the litany of errors that usually clogs even the best intentioned of its works—the only one I can really think of is I believe someone went through and tried to fix something by replacing all instances of “or” with “om” because there were several examples of that (like “comstack” for cornstack or “tom” for “torn”).
The colour pictures really help with the text, too; usually books publish in black and white, and there’s something criminal about transforming the lush, vibrant beauty of relics that have managed to retain their paint all these millennia into black and white lifeless renderings.
June 3, 2022
I LOVED this book! So easy to read, yet very informative. Like it mentions at the beginning of the book, there is a lot of information and interest on the Pharaoh’s and their tombs, but what about the people of Egypt who weren’t famous? What were their lives like? Well, this book takes you through an imaginary family and walks you through what their lives and occupations would have been like. While the book is not written in fiction form, having the “family” included helped make a lot of the information easier for me to retain and understand.
The chapters are broken down by topic. Such as: religion, law, children, death, etc. Because of that, the chapters are very long, but broken down by subheadings. Some of the things I learned while reading about different areas of life were so intriguing. Some children had dolls with movable legs and arms, families with a certain status had country estates where they lived during select seasons of the year and get this, pet alligators were adorned with gold jewelry. While some of the culture seemed so “Egyptian” so to speak, other information presented them as regular, everyday, relatable people. And I loved that.
Now, there is like, thousands of years of history involved when we’re talking about Egypt. And obviously, culture did change over time! So it’s important to point out that the information presented in this book is mostly life in the New Kingdom, though practices from an earlier or later period are mentioned in various cases. For example, the author did a great job explaining that not every dynasty built pyramids, but some buried important pharaoh’s, priests and officials in the Valley of the Kings. So it’s inclusive, but not exhaustive.
Conclusion: If you have an interest in Egyptian history but don’t want to be bogged down with the thousands of years you could study, get this book. It is the perfect, deep yet concise overview of what life was like in Egypt. You don’t have to be a scholar to understand what’s written, and I really think you’ll enjoy learning about so many different aspects of Egyptian life. Highly recommend it!
The chapters are broken down by topic. Such as: religion, law, children, death, etc. Because of that, the chapters are very long, but broken down by subheadings. Some of the things I learned while reading about different areas of life were so intriguing. Some children had dolls with movable legs and arms, families with a certain status had country estates where they lived during select seasons of the year and get this, pet alligators were adorned with gold jewelry. While some of the culture seemed so “Egyptian” so to speak, other information presented them as regular, everyday, relatable people. And I loved that.
Now, there is like, thousands of years of history involved when we’re talking about Egypt. And obviously, culture did change over time! So it’s important to point out that the information presented in this book is mostly life in the New Kingdom, though practices from an earlier or later period are mentioned in various cases. For example, the author did a great job explaining that not every dynasty built pyramids, but some buried important pharaoh’s, priests and officials in the Valley of the Kings. So it’s inclusive, but not exhaustive.
Conclusion: If you have an interest in Egyptian history but don’t want to be bogged down with the thousands of years you could study, get this book. It is the perfect, deep yet concise overview of what life was like in Egypt. You don’t have to be a scholar to understand what’s written, and I really think you’ll enjoy learning about so many different aspects of Egyptian life. Highly recommend it!
January 18, 2021
Very detailed view of the life of a mid-level family, with some color illustrations of artifacts.
September 6, 2023
I enjoyed reading this novel about the life of an Egyptian nobel and the way his life was in ancient Egypt..
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 19, 2025
Author did not need to use fictitious family. I had a hard time with “not much is known about” and then have a ten page narrative about that subject. Bibliography at end seemed extensive.
February 2, 2017
Fascinating book providing information on the daily life of people in Ancient Egypt. The book is divided into 3 sections based on the 3 seasons of the Egyptian year. The chapters cover various aspects of their lives such as funeral customs, military campaigns, medical and legal professions and use a fictional family as the method of illustrating the various aspects. It really makes the lives of the people come alive. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the Ancient Egyptians.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews