Tutankhamun's Egypt

When the boy Tutankhamun came to the throne of his ancestors about 1362 BC, Egypt had already existed as a kingdom for over 1700 years with a characteristic culture which had adapted itself to the changed conditions of the Late Bronze Age. The great stone pyramids of Giza, Sakkarah and Dahshur had by then fallen into ruins, their mortuary cults had lapsed and they were visited only by sightseers looking at the past. In a song which the young king must have heard, the poet pointed to them as examples of the vanity of human aspirations as he exhorted his listeners to eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow detah would come to them too. Such moralisings did npot prevent the Egyptians from burying their Pharoah with a wealth of treasure which, when it was found virtually intact in 1922, did nothing to dispel that aura of sensational mystery and exotic obscurity that has always surrounded the Ancient Egyptians from Classical times to the present. This book shows the Ancient Egyptians as a people grappling with the problems of lviing in the world at the time Tutankhamun reigned...