From Cheops, Ramses and Tutankhamun to the world of laborers and
craftsmen What do we really know about our ancestors? Not about the
rulers and generals, but about laborers, farmers, soldiers and
families. Egypt is a perfect case in point, almost a blank slate for
most of us as it regards details of their everyday life. This useful
and informative book attempts to set the record straight by offering
a distinctive take on that most mythologized of epochs. Who would
have guessed, for example, that the first strike in recorded history
took place in 1152 BC during work on the necropolis in the Valley of
the Kings, a protest by construction workers against delayed
deliveries of oil and flour? Two fairly banal commodities maybe, but
essential: oil protected the skin against the savage desert climate,
whilst flour was the base ingredient for thirty different kinds of
nutritional cake. It is this detailed examination of the evidence
that distinguishes this volume, with chapters on everything from
relationships to leisure activities, the role of women to the
manufacture of mummies. And just like the mummies, "fragile as
eggshell but solid as a statue" and magically able to transcend
death, both people and country are brought alive for us again.
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