Social History

Red Land, Black Land: Daily Life in Ancient Egypt by Barbara Mertz. The companion volume to Temples, Tombs, and Hieroglyphs, this book covers Egyptian society and daily life. Among other topics, Mertz discusses clothing, education, military life, art, magic, science, and religion and funerary practices. https://amzn.to/2Fd6mL4 Daily Life in Ancient Egypt by Kasia Szpakowska. This is an excellent overview of life in Middle Kingdom Egypt using the pyramid town of Lahun as a case study. http://amzn.to/2xy9JCn The World of Ancient Egypt: A Daily Life Encyclopedia by Peter Lacovara. This two volume encyclopedia, written by a former curator of Egyptian art at the Carlos Museum, includes readable overviews of all aspects of Egyptian society, including the arts, economics and work, family, fashion, food and drink, housing, politics, recreation, religion, science, and warfare. https://amzn.to/2USKEzd Village Life in Ancient Egypt: Laundry Lists and Love Songs by Audrey McDowell. This is a superb overview of daily life in New Kingdom Egypt, looking primarily at the wealth of textual information from the workmen’s village of Deir el-Medina. McDowell covers family structure, daily life, religion, education and training, law, and the workmen’s construction of the royal tombs. http://amzn.to/2yXEFgs The City of Akhenaten and Nefertiti: Amarna and Its People by Barry Kemp. Written by the director of the excavations at Amarna, this book covers the archaeology of the short-lived 18th Dynasty capital of Egypt in an approachable and readable way. Drawing upon architecture, faunal and floral remains, sculpture, and the textual record, Kemp reconstructs the palaces, temples, administrative buildings, tombs, and houses of Amarna. https://amzn.to/2y9BLXE The Egyptians by Sergio Donadoni. This edited volume provides an excellent overview of the most important groups in ancient Egyptian society, including chapters on peasants, craftsmen, scribes, bureaucrats, priests, soldiers, slaves, foreigners, the dead, kings, and women. The primary drawback to this approach to Egyptian society is that one does not come away with a good grasp of how these groups interacted with one another and the degree of mobility between offices and positions. https://amzn.to/2LGJHZ4 Dancing for Hathor: Women in Ancient Egypt by Carolyn Graves-Brown. This is the most recent and comprehensive book on women in ancient Egypt. http://amzn.to/2yXERMI Egypt in the Age of Cleopatra, History and Society under the Ptolemies by Michel Chauveau. This book provides a very general history of the Ptolemaic Kingdom with a specific emphasis on the reign of Cleopatra before settling into its main purpose of examining the society, culture and economy of the Ptolemaic period. All in all, it is an excellent resource and covers religion, bureaucracy, demography, geography, ethnography and cultural exchange by making full use of literary and archaeological resources, making it the definitive volume on Hellenistic Egypt to date. http://amzn.to/2xy6hrt Hellenistic Egypt: Monarchy, Society, Economy, Culture by Jean Bingen. Bingen’s work has been one of, if not the most, influential collections of literature on the topic of Hellenistic Egypt for contemporary scholars. Although new archaeological and papyrological discoveries have cast a different light on elements of social structure and cross-cultural contact in the Ptolemaic period since its publication, it is still essential reading for the subject. This edition has a forward by Roger Bagnall, one of the preeminent scholars in the field and includes high quality photos of coins, reliefs, statuary, and other physical finds. http://amzn.to/2gb2tK9