- Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: Princeton University Press; New Ed edition (4 Oct 2004)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0691120587
- ISBN-13: 978-0691120584
- Product Dimensions: 23 x 15.4 x 2 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 898,267 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Review
Private Life in New Kingdom Egypt is a happy example of a synthesis of factual knowledge and theoretical questioning. It has much to say, both about a particular and well-documented society and about the nature of the suppositions that a modern scholar needs to bring to such a society to make sense of it. . . . [It] brings together an impressive range of material, sets this material sensibly in context and uses the testimony of an ancient society to remind us what it is to be human, and how life's challenges and limitations need to be met. -- John Ray, Times Higher Education Supplement
Drawing on extensive archaeological and textual evidence . . . Meskell draws a richly nuanced picture of life in an Egyptian village in New Kingdom Egypt, using the concept of human life cycle as her organizing framework. -- "Choice
For [general readers] the book will clearly be an extremely useful source for understanding the private lives of the Egyptians at this time. For Egyptologists it should provide a unified, up-to-date view of this aspect of the subject and Lynn Meskell has done scholars a service in writing it. -- Helen Strudwick, Antiquity
Informative, well researched, entertaining, and [it] makes an important contribution to the field. -- Ellen Morris, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology
Drawing on extensive archaeological and textual evidence . . . Meskell draws a richly nuanced picture of life in an Egyptian village in New Kingdom Egypt, using the concept of human life cycle as her organizing framework. -- "Choice
For [general readers] the book will clearly be an extremely useful source for understanding the private lives of the Egyptians at this time. For Egyptologists it should provide a unified, up-to-date view of this aspect of the subject and Lynn Meskell has done scholars a service in writing it. -- Helen Strudwick, Antiquity
Informative, well researched, entertaining, and [it] makes an important contribution to the field. -- Ellen Morris, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology
Product Description
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.
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First Sentence
THE MODERN WORLD has a very specific and well-defined concept of private life, although it does not maintain a monopoly on the construct. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
THE MODERN WORLD has a very specific and well-defined concept of private life, although it does not maintain a monopoly on the construct. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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10 of 28 people found the following review helpful
A very dissapointing academic book
15 Feb 2003
Format:Hardcover
Four people voted on the usefulness of my original review, and none of them found it helpful. I guess that is reason enough to try to rewrite it. Whether a review is pro or con, it ought to explain enough about why the reviewer made the decisions they made to be useful to the people who read the review.
My main problem with this book was the writer's style. The book read like one long catalog of citations, or an overgrown footnote instead of a book. I recognize that the author wanted to place herself within the context of current theories and demonstrate that she knew what that range consisted of. It would have been more useful to me if she had discussed the theories and her opinions of them. I found the lists of historians useless and frustrating. I kept wanting to get to the meat of the issues, but all I found was pages and pages of these lists.
It occurs to me that what I was reading was a PHD thesis and not a book. I suppose there is a place for published theses, but my bookshelf isn't one of them.
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