Ancient Egypt
The scale of ancient Egyptian history is overwhelming. Americans (North and South) wrestle with the consequences of five hundred years of invasion, conquest, and settlement. Europeans argue over what delineates different phases of their history (modern, the rise of the nation-state, phases of the Renaissance, medieval, post-Roman, and so on). Well, that gets you back only 1500 years. Classicists pride their discipline on another thousand years. Egyptians look on, bemused. They go back 6000 years without breathing hard. Ancient Egypt (a deep and long category, obviously) represents a civilization that still fascinates us. Think pharaohs, pyramids, mummies, hieroglyphs, the Sphinx, the Nile, "King Tut." Children and adults love such stuff. I debated with myself whether to be a purist on Ancient Egypt and end my listings with Alexander the Great's conquest and the great era of the Ptolemaic dynasty, but you would miss so much in those 275 years leading up to the pragmatic and unimaginative Romans building their empire on Egyptian grain. I wanted to include the Pharos lighthouse, Alexandria and its library, Cleopatra. So I did, and I will. This page, these offerings, like the rest of Whistlestop, will be carefully curated and vetted and supplemented as I find and list interesting items.
The Mystery of Khufu's Tomb [1922]
The Mystery of Khufu's Tomb [1922]
The Mystery of Khufu's Tomb is a 'Jeff Ramsden' story by Talbot Mundy, an unjustly neglected Anglo-American adventure writer of the early twentieth century. In this exciting instalment, the much-traveled Ramsden meets an old friend, the feisty and beautiful Joan Angela Leich, whose property holdings in Egypt have attracted unwelcome interest. Soon they are off to the desert, to try and solve the mystery of the location of Khufu's tomb, aided by an old Chinese mathematician, and hindered by the usual swathe of villains, intent on obtaining the treasure for themselves. Far more modern and anti-imperial in outlook than his predecessors Kipling and Rider Haggard, (although not always in his characters' speech), Mundy writes a rollicking good yarn, with plenty of thrills along the way.