Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

An illustrated examination of the Egyptian workforce which built the pyramids, which provides details of their everyday lives outside their work. Originally published in 1986 and now available in paperback.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

The book is a review of evidence found almost 100 years ago by Sir William Flinders Petrie at Kahun, workman's quarters at the 12th-dynasty pyramid at Lahun, the earliest such workmen's site known. The publisher's dustcover claims that it is an ``engrossing detective story'' whose characters, the builders of pyramids, are said to ``worry about their families, grumble about the quality of the food, cheat overseers, even plan a strike for better conditions.'' Such, however, is not the story of life at Kahun but rather of life at a later workmen's village, Deir el Medina. Moreover, reader expectation is falsely raised when David (Manchester Museum) claims that papyri and objects of daily use provide historians with a ``unique opportunity to examine the living and working conditions of ordinary men and women'' (p.4). Discussion of the content of the papyri is exceptionally general, and much of what the reader is told about the objects of daily use turns out to be restatement of what is already well known. Separate chapters on analysis of pottery, metals, and textiles provide some new information, e.g., on highly specialized scientific methods for distinguishing pottery; these chapters interest narrowly defined specialists and are far from a redeeming feature for the general reader. For readers who wish to know about pharaoh's work force, John Romer's Ancient Lives: Daily Life in Egypt of the Pharaohs (CH, Mar '85), which treats Dynasties 19 and 20, is far more informative and readable. The same may be said of the more general work by T.G.H. James, Pharaoh's People (CH, Jan '85). Not Recommended.-T.C. Hartman, University of Wisconsin-Superior