Much of the literature on ancient Egypt centers on pharaohs or
on elite conceptions of the afterlife. This scintillating book
examines how ordinary ancient Egyptians lived their lives. Drawing
on the remarkably rich and detailed archaeological, iconographic,
and textual evidence from some 450 years of the New Kingdom, as
well as recent theoretical innovations from several fields, it
reconstructs private and social life from birth to death. The
result is a meaningful portrait composed of individual biographies,
communities, and landscapes.
Structured according to the cycles of life, the book relies on
categories that the ancient Egyptians themselves used to make sense
of their lives. Lynn Meskell gracefully sifts the evidence to
reveal Egyptian domestic arrangements, social and family dynamics,
sexuality, emotional experience, and attitudes toward the cadences
of human life. She discusses how the Egyptians of the New Kingdom
constituted and experienced self, kinship, life stages,
reproduction, and social organization. And she examines their
creation of communities and the material conditions in which they
lived. Also included is neglected information on the formation of
locality and the construction of gender and sexual identity and new
evidence from the mortuary record, including important new data on
the burial of children. Throughout, Meskell is careful to highlight
differences among ancient Egyptians--the ways, for instance, that
ethnicity, marital status, age, gender, and occupation patterned
their experiences.
Readers will come away from this book with new insights on how
life may have been experienced and conceived of by ancient
Egyptians in all their variety. This makes Private Life in New
Kingdom Egypt unique in Egyptology and fascinating to read.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!