Customer Reviews

The Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt (Landmark Books)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As a home-schooling father, I bought this book to supplement our study of ancient history for my son (grade 7) and daughter (grade 5). My son who likes history is enjoying it; and although my daughter finds the reading a little difficult at times, she likes it OK, too. I found it very well written and informative. Starting out with the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, the author takes the reader on a journey of Egypt's remote past to the lives of the great Pharoahs. The history of ancient Egypt from the Nile valley to the military campaigns in the Middle East of Thutmose III and Rameses II are covered in good story-telling fashion. Included throughout are desciptions of the ancient Egyptians' religious beliefs and culture. Black-and-white illustrations support the text. Although it is suggested for 9-12 year olds, I would recommend it for older readers as well.

Written for children who are independent readers, Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt was, nevertheless, a fascinating introduction to Ancient Egypt for all my children. My younger daughter was in first grade at the time and needed some help with the reading, but the stories themselves were of great interest to her. It was fun for me to see all three of them learn about the Rosetta Stone and other archaeological discoveries, most of which I hadn't learned about until I was well past childhood. It's amazing what children will find interesting when it comes wrapped in a story. Although some may regard the story-telling as somewhat fanciful (obviously we don't really know what most of these people really thought or felt), the author has succeeded in her quest to bring the attention of the reader into the context of the history she describes.

We bought this book along with the The Greenleaf Guide to Ancient Egypt (Greenleaf Guides), which listed it as one of its primary texts for children's history. I recommend that book, along Tony Allan's Time Traveller Book of Pharaohs and Pyramids, if you are going to teach your children the history of ancient Egypt. The Greenleaf book helps you organize your children's study with questions and projects (along with recommended resources), while the well-illustrated Time Traveller book helps the children visualize what they're reading about.

This is a wonderful general introduction tot he study of ancient Egypt. Caution: This is really meant for grades 7 and up. The langauge is difficult for younger ones,even as a read-aloud. Also, the first chapter is mostly conjecture about the beginning of civilization in the Nile River Valley. You can skip it. Overall, it is fascinating reading.

We bought this book for our year of study of Egypt in Home School. Since we are following a classical approach, my oldest son is only in2nd grade. though recommended for this age by various home educators, I"ve found that I've had to summarize some of it for him. or he got bogged down. Still, we love it!

This book is another Landmark Books success!

Your children and you will learn, not just about Pharaohs, but about Egyptian history as well. The author utilizes stories well in order to draw the reader in and retain his interest. This is no mere book of facts that you will have to drag your children through; I found myself engaged and learning while reading it.

Of course, this is not the FULL history of Egypt, but all the main Pharaoh's and the events surrounding them are covered in detail. I take issue with a few of the assumptions the author presents that have been made by modern Egyptologists, but the error is in our current thinking on Egypt, not the author's work.

(For example, do you really believe that illiterate peasants worked from sunup to sundown and were pleased to do so for Pharaoh--to a man? Or, that modern scholars who have been able to find little evidence from the time period of Cheops know more about the opinion of the ancient Egyptians towards their Pharaoh than the Egyptians themselves did in 50BC?)

Some Pharaohs covered include Cheops, Hatshepsut, Thutmose III, Akhnaton, and Rameses II. Also covered are the times of chaos in between the kingdoms, minor pharaohs and some queens, and times when Egypt was conquered and how this changed their kingdom. Even daily life of ancient Egypt is described within the text, making this an good stand-alone study on Egypt.

Summary: This is an excellent middle-school resource for a study on ancient Egypt that will provide information about most of the main events in a chronological manner. Highly recommended!

The mythology of Egypt can be fun, but the history is what really draws your attention. A clear part of Egyptian history is her pharaohs, and this book follows the line of ancient pharaohs with adequately-sized sections for each.
If you are looking for specific details this might not be very helpful, but it is very good for reading about the bigger stories.
This is a great book to help start young readers on their road to learning about Ancient Egypt.
A 'must have' for any Egypt-history-lover!

In this book, the author examines the important discoveries and the pharaohs of Ancient Egypt. She gives a description of the infamous Rosetta Stone, then continues with a brief history of the Ancient Egyptian civilization and religious beliefs. She also reports on the pharaohs and their accomplishments, including those of Akhenaton, Ramesses II, Cheops, Hatshepsut and Thutmose III. An interesting book for children ages 9 to 12.

This book was published in 1964. The copyright renewed in 1992, but it doesn't appear that any text was added or changed. I don't know how much the state of our knowledge about ancient Egypt has changed in the last fifty years or if anything that was thought we knew then has since been proven wrong. I'm no expert on Egyptology, so I guess I'll have to take it on faith that the book is accurate.

In any case, this book is an eminently readable introduction to ancient Egyptian history. It takes a very narrative style, so each chapter is more like a story with identifiable characters and plot, rather than just a series of historical events, figures and dates. The reader gets a real sense of the Pharaohs and some of the other historical figures as actual people with individual personalities. Also, the stories often open nearer the present day with stories of the archeologists, thieves or peasants who made the discoveries which broadened our knowledge of particular historical eras. For instance, a peasant woman digging in the desert stumbled upon carved tablets which turned out to be messages to a Pharaoh whose existence had previously only been speculated. Excavations at that site led to the uncovering of a whole city dedicated to a different god which marked a brief unusual interlude in Egypt's otherwise slow-changing ancient history.

This book also focuses on Egyptian culture and lifestyle as well as its history. One can almost feel oneself in the Nile Valley, adapting to the seasonal repetition of flood, farming and harvest which marked Egyptian life for thousands of years. Because of the annual flood, in which farming was not really possible, Egyptians had more leisure time than many other early civilizations. Therefore, they had time to create enormous monuments, cities and temples, nearly every inch of which were often inscribed with hieroglyphs and other writing and artwork carved into the stone. Nearly the entirety of their earthly existence was spent preparing for their life in the next world. For pharaohs, that meant elaborate tombs complete with all the necessities and luxuries they had become accustomed to in this world, in order to accompany them to the next world. For other Egyptians, in the early days, preparation for the afterlife meant serving Pharaoh and being near him in this life so as to make yourself indispensable to him in the next. In later Egyptian civilizations, some of the nobility developed the idea of entering into the next world in their own right and, hence, they built their own elaborate tombs.

I recommend this book to kids and adults alike as a good introduction to ancient Egypt, but if using it as a part of a schooling curriculum, I would recommend adding more modern supplemental material to see how our knowledge of ancient Egypt has advanced.

This is a really great book for children looking to learn more about the culture and lifestyle of the ancient Egyptians. It's not easy to explain difficult cultural traditions to young adults, so this book really impressed me with the way it was easily accessible.

The book has an error on the Rosetta stone stating that it is made out of Basalt _ the Rosetta stone is Aswan granite. It was easy reading- fairly simple content