Robert Stoces

P.5 1/13/10
Ancient Lives: Daily Life in Egypt of the Pharaohs
By John Romer 217 Pgs

As the world becomes frantic with the future, many people forget about the past.
They forget about the great civilizations such as Rome and Egypt. During its heyday in
the B.C. days, it was the greatest place for trade, controversy, and mystery. But as we are
intrigued by the great Pyramids and the Tombs we sometimes lose sight of the people
who made Egypt and the way they lived. The people whose day to day lives might have
made the difference in society or moved ideas forward such as life after death.
One Ancient city that was considered an ancient Altar was diverse in being a
farming town yet full of life. Thebes was a place on the edge of the Nile where
agriculture ruled. The book goes into great detail about Thebes being a very diverse place
with Temples in the desert to the west while the village rested next to the water. Thebes
would later become a political hotspot where many Government officials would reside.
Thebes would later become the capital but was later moved and would soon die down
when people moved onto greater cities.
Tomb makers were the workers responsible with the souls of the dead. They
worked in big cities but usually lived in a group of other tomb makers. The best tomb
makers worked for the Pharaoh himself. These tomb makers were paid a lot to do the best
so the Patron of Ra would approve. These were the places where the gods should be able
to live in the afterlife. Many Pharaohs would have different tombs setup so that grave
robbers would not touch their things. The Pharaoh put his trust in these workers and they
were not let down.
Ancient Egyptians are probably best known for the way they took care of the
dead. Many people could not afford to be mummified but those who could, would. The
Pharaohs were taken care of in the best of ways. The Mummy team would take special
care of each organ and place them in jars. Each jar was a piece of art that was usually
decorated with a different god. The one organ thought to be useless by the Ancient
Egyptians was the brain. This was discarded of as soon as they got it out. When the
Pharaohs were laid to rest, they thought it was forever, oh how wrong they were.
A very Lucrative but deadly profession was grave robbing. Very few people
chose this as their money maker and fewer made it out alive. These people had to be
cunning yet deadly. There is almost no way to know if there were any good robbers just
trying to make a living but they all had to know they were disrespecting the Pharaohs
and their very own gods.
Ancient Lives seems to be a series of books that target different subjects in a
much too detailed manner. As first Chapter of Part One ends, you can tell what kind of
book this will be. Some things are better left unsaid such as the wind pattern in 1105 B.C.
Some parts were interesting but overall the book was a snore fest. Ancient Egypt was not
lively or that entertaining to me after I read this book.