Conversations With Mummies : New Light on the Lives of Ancient Egyptians by Rosalie David and Rick Archbold is the latest Ancient Egyptian mummy book (Fall 2000). Handsomely designed and filled with beautiful color photographs, it tells many compelling stories about the science (and techniques) of mummy studies. In alternating chapters told by Egyptologist David (with a more personal account) and writer Archbold (using a more journalistic voice), the authors focus on a variety of mummies that have been studied in depth, including

• Mummy 1770 (a mysterious mummy of a teenage girl with many broken bones and amputated legs)
• the mummies of Two Brothers (two more mysterious mummies whose coffins indicated that they had the same mother though their genetic composition and age difference seems to suggest otherwise)
• Djedmaatesankh and Asru, both chantresses of Amun, who each died painful deaths (Djed had an large dental cyst and abscess, while Asru had two parasitic diseases among other illnesses).
• Nakht, a young weaver who may have been sentenced to hard labor in a granite quarry

The stories of these mummies are told by "reading the tea leaves" of the past: coffin inscriptions, burial and artifact information, and results from present-day medical testing. Throughout the book David and Archbold carefully explain how science has been used to further our understanding of Egyptian mummies and disease. What's more, they show how current work on mummy tissue (through the Manchester Mummy Tissue Bank which will eventually house up to 2,000 tissue samples from mummies around the world) is being used to find treatments for diseases (including schistosomiasis and malaria in Egypt, as well as Chagas disease in Central and South America) and to answer some intriguing questions (Did the Ancient Egyptians use drugs such as cocaine and nicotine? If so, how did they receive access to these non-Egyptian products?). 

In short, if you want to know what is currently going on in the world of mummy research (and if you want to familiarize yourself with a number of fascinating mummies), you cannot go wrong with this book. As up to date as possible, the book also includes four pages on the Valley of the Golden Mummies and boxes on other relevant discoveries, including the KV5 tomb which may contain the sons of Ramesses II. 192 pages.