Description
Book SynopsisMuch of the literature on ancient Egypt centers on pharaohs or on elite conceptions of the afterlife. Drawing on the archaeological, iconographic, and textual evidence from the earlier years of the New Kingdom, this book examines how ordinary ancient Egyptians lived their lives, from birth to death.
Trade 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
Table of ContentsIllustrations and Tables xi Acknowledgments xv Conventions xvii CHAPTER ONE: The Interpretative Framework 1 CHAPTER TWO: Locales and Communities 17 CHAPTER THREE: Social Selves 57 CHAPTER FOUR: Founding a House 94 CHAPTER FIVE: Love, Eroticism, and the Sexual Self 126 CHAPTER SIX: Embodied Knowledge 148 CHAPTER SEVEN: Cycles of Death and Life 178 Postscript 208 Notes 211 Bibliography 215 Index 233
