Books read by year

Thursday, September 14, 2023

Thinking about history ~ and King Tut

The Complete Tutankhamun: The King, the Tomb, the Royal Treasure ~ by Nicholas Reeves, 1990, history, 224 pages

The tomb of Tutankhamun, with its breathtaking treasures, has exerted a unique hold on the popular imagination ever since its discovery in 1922.  It remains the greatest archeological find ever made.  The story of the boy-king who was buried in splendor at the height of Egyptian civilization. the determined quest for his tomb by Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon, and the unforeseen riches eventually revealed — these are ingredients unparalleled in the annuals of archaeology.

Yet for all the publicity at the time of the discovery and since — given added spice by the linking of Carnarvon's early death with the legend of pharaoh's curse — it remains a story that had been only partly told, since Carter never produced a complete account of his excavations.  The Tutankhamun exhibitions of the 1960s and 1970s generated a spate of popular books, but none added significantly to what Carter had already published about the tomb.  This book with its 519 illustrations (65 of them in color) was written to tell the whole story.

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