As a 5-year-old child, I only ever wanted to spend my Saturdays at the British Museum looking at the mummies – until my own mummy started to think I was odd. But nothing is odd about mummies (the ancient Egyptian or the parental kind). The Egyptian mummy was a fundamental part – albeit a small part – of Egyptian funerary beliefs and culture. The mummy has now become an iconic image of Egypt, and many horror films have given it a bad name. Other than questions about mummies, the first thing anyone ever asks me as an Egyptologist is ‘So who built the pyramids?’ or ‘Was Tutankhamun murdered?’ As valid as these questions are, Egyptology(the study of ancient Egypt) offers so many more interesting things to discover and explore than these age-old queries. (And while others have answered these questions fre quently and well, I offer my plain-English answers too in this book.) In my opinion, some smaller pieces of research in Egypt are far more impres sive than the pyramids, such as examining
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