A word of caution - there are an awful lot of 'popular history' books as well as 'popular archaeology' books about Egypt which present conjecture as fact... Singing pyramids that are aligned with Orion's belt, that kind of thing. Probably not what you are after!

I also go to the children's section for my first bit of info. One of my favourite tricks for a quick & fun read about any historical period is to grab the children's Horrible Histories. There is one called Awesome Egyptians which I have not read, but they are usually quite informative and well researched, as well as completely irreverent.

If you are interested in a nice chronological layout and overview of each period and pharaoh's reign, I like Peter Clayton's Chronicle of the Pharaohs. It's also nicely illustrated.

Joyce Tyldesley has also written some very good books on Egypt, particularly women in ancient Egypt and how they led their daily lives. Daughters of Isis is a good place to start. I see where she's got a new one out, Chronicles of the Queens of Eygpt.

There are a lot of books out there about King Tut, but there is so much conjecture about Tut, it can be hard to distinguish scholarly facts from enthusiastic speculation about how he died.

The Washington Post gave Christine El Mahdy's Tutankhamen: The Life and Death of the Boy King a good review a few years ago; I read it in conjunction with Nicholas Reeves' Akhenaten:EgyptÂs False Prophet, which gives a somewhat larger picture and provides more context for the history of Tutankhamen. Both include a fair amount of speculation, as Georgia Peach warns, with more space given to Akhenaten than Tut.

If interested in the story of the search, discovery and archaeological excavation of Tut's tomb, check out Thomas Hoving's Tutankhamun: The Untold Story, but only if you can stand reading about all the politics in excruciating detail. I found it wearisome, but then I work in a large bureaucracy and the book was too much a reflection of my typical workday.

For a fictional take on the story and if you like minimalist music, check Philip Glass's opera Akhnaten.

Finally, be sure to look over David MacCauley's Motel of the Mysteries, to keep a sense of proportion. *s*

cheryl

"Elizabeth Peters", the pen name of the author of the Amelia Peabody archeological mysteries set in Victorian Egypt, is, in fact, an Egyptian scholar: from her bio:

Barbara G. Mertz studied at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, receiving an M.A. in 1950 and a Ph.D. in Egyptology in 1952.
Under her own name she is the author of Temples, Tombs and Hieroglyphs, A Popular history of Ancient Egypt, and Red Land, Black Land, Daily Life in Ancient Egypt. According to her website, they are still both in print.

Thank you for the titles! I am off to the library this afternoon with list in hand.

Thank you everyone. I truly appreciate your help.
PAM

Okay, tickets in hand, I am reading and reading about King Tut. I wanted to bring this to the top just once more in case anyone thought of any other books.

Again, many thanks. And if any of you already saw the exhibit, how was it?

PAM

Something just popped into my head that is probably not relevant or useful - but enjoyable: Agatha Christie wrote one murder mystery set in ancient Egypt, Death Comes as the End. It was probably reasonably well researched as she was married to an archaeologist and accompanied him on some of his trips. I don't know which period exactly it's set in, though.

Although it's not exactly what you are looking for, the chapter on the beginnings of egyptology in CW Ceram's book "Gods, Graves and Scholars" is good. Lots of interesting characters were involved and I have been on the lookout for biographies for a couple of them, as well as an expanded history of egyptology.