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The
Mummy by well-respected Egyptologist Joyce
Tyldesley is an
oversized,
quite affordable paperback stuffed with color photos and very readable
information about mummies from Egypt (and from the world of publishing and movies).
Tyldesley, like a great teacher, knows the material so well that she can share
it with her students with ease and make it come alive (well, almost).
Although there is nothing
ground-breaking in this book (no mummies from the Valley of the
Golden Mummies,
for example),
what makes this book worth reading is the level of detail (perhaps I should say,
"little stories") that Tyldesley includes as examples. Whatever
information she gives, she always follows up with fascinating examples that help
the reader visualize the information. Particularly interesting are the
"little facts"--such as what happened to all of the waste material for
a body that was being turned into a mummy. My favorite chapter is the one that
concerns what happened to the pharaohs' mummies --filled with stories and little
facts.
She also includes a lengthy
chapter on mummy curses which pretty neatly covers the subject from King Tut to
the Titanic Mummy, as well as a final chapter on Unwrapping the Mummy--which
discusses mummy abuses and present-day mummy science.
The photos make it an excellent
reference book for older children (grades 5+) and for adults (the text is
extremely well-written).
Table of
Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1 (The Art of
Embalming)
Chapter 2 (The Fate of the
Pharaohs)
Chapter
3 (Animal Mummies)
Chapter 4 (The Curse of the Mummy's
Tomb)
Chapter 5 (Star
of Page and Screen)
Chapter 6 (Unwrapping a
Mummy)
Bibliography, Index, and
Credits.
128 oversized
pages,
over 120 photographs (most in color).
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