Search results for ""Author Guillemette Andreu""

The Golden Age of Ancient Egypt comes alive as Guillemette Andreu recreates the details of daily life. Construction sites teem with workers building the Great Pyramids and the Sphinx. Administrators bustle to and fro, handling their assignments from the pharaoh's court. Scribes train themselves to draft a variety of letters.Andreu describes the Egyptians as they spend a day in the marshes with family and friends. They glide on light skiffs through the papyrus plants, stopping occasionally to marvel at the marsh creatures: frogs, butterflies, kingfishers, ibises, herons, lapwings, weasels, and mongooses. Because the marshes also shelter crocodiles and hippopotami, the day is not without its perils. In her vivid representation of Egyptian life, Andreu makes use of letters from family archives, full of household instructions from travelers and nostalgic greetings from grown children living away from their parents.The principal source of evidence for Egyptian life-styles between 2650 and 1750 B.C. are the scenes carved or painted on the walls of tombs. Short hieroglyphic inscriptions accompany these images, recording what might have been said by the men and women pictured. Andreu's book is amply illustrated and supplemented by a bibliography. It will delight tourists planning to visit Egypt, museum goers, as well as students.

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The catalogue of the first exhibition ever dedicated exclusively to Meroe, the legendary capital of the ancient Kingdom of Kush (the land of the black pharaohs of the XXV dynasty) and famous for its necropolis of pyramids. This enigmatic and majestic civilisation flourished between 270 BC and 350 AD. A cultural heir of Egypt and its pharaohs, Meroe's empire developed in what is now Sudan, on the shores of the Nile. It was well connected to the commercial networks of the Eastern Mediterranean sea. Its religious pantheon, its political and cultural system, the writing, the cities and its art remind us of the richness of this African civilisation. Over 200 objects are illustrated in the catalogue: sculptures, ceramics, jewels, reliefs, etc. The texts are written by scholars and supply the most updated knowledge - enhanced by recent archaeological excavations carried out by the Louvre - on this fascinating Kingdom.

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