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.
Tutankhamun in My Own Hieroglyphs
Tutankhamun in My Own Hieroglyphs
EXCLUSIVE: Tutankhamun Tells His Side of the Story at Last
What was it like to grow up in the royal palace of ancient Egypt, and to become king—pharaoh!—at the age of nine? And then one day to wake up dead and trapped in a tomb for three thousand years with nothing to read and no one to talk to except a ba-bird, a cow-headed bed with personality problems, and a few gilded gods? Tutankhamun, the famous boy-king of ancient Egypt, is here to tell us—in his own hieroglyphs. From driving chariots and annoying his sisters at the palace to playing board games with miniature statues in his tomb, he describes the ups and downs of his short life and his very long afterlife, and how everything changed when Howard Carter found him and his magnificent treasures in 1922 and introduced him—and his faithful but cheeky monkey, Fingers—to the modern world. From the author of How I Became a Mummy, this colorful first-hand account of the life and times of Egypt’s best-loved pharaoh will fascinate children and Egyptologists of all ages.