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Barbara Mertz.
Red Land, Black Land: daily life in Ancient Egypt: 2nd edn.
Harper. 2008

Internationally renowned Egyptologist Barbara Mertz transports us back thousands of years and immerses us in the sights and sounds of day-to-day life in a vanished desert culture.

Their civilization has inspired myriad films, books, pieces of art, myths, and dreams, and they built grand monuments that still stagger the imagination five thousand years later. But who were these people? Mertz ushers us into their homes, workplaces, temples, and palaces to give us an intimate view of the everyday worlds of royals and commoners alike.

Displaying the unparalleled descriptive power, unerring eye for detail, keen insight, and trenchant wit that have made the novels she writes (as Elizabeth Peters and Barbara Michaels) perennial New York Times bestsellers, Barbara Mertz brings a buried civilisation to vivid life, taking us closer than ever before to the people of a great lost culture so different from—yet so surprisingly similar tomdash;our own.

Barbara Mertz.
Temples, Tombs and Hieroglyphs: a brief history of ancient Egypt: 2nd edn.
Robinson. 2010

From the Stone Age to the dawn of the Roman Empire, Barbara Mertz brings the extraordinary story of Ancient Egypt to life. This is the perfect introduction to the rise and fall of the great ruling dynasties and their pharaohs; retelling the stories behind the impressive monuments as well as glimpses into what archaeology and the historical record reveal about everyday life in the ancient civilization – religion and culture, folklore and fairytales, with stories of the explorers, scientists and heroes who changed our understanding of the past.

Temples, Tombs and Hieroglyphs has been fully updated to take into account all the latest discoveries. It is a vibrant, colourful introduction to the world behind the myth of the Sphinx, the ancient tombs of the Valley of the Kings and the history of Cleopatra, told by Barbara Mertz, an expert in the field as well as a brilliant storyteller.