Mixing a historical account with fictional scenes this book brings to life the Vizier Rekhmire, who was the highest official in the court of King Tutmosis III, and his family. It is based on archaeological evidence predominantly in the tomb of Rekhmire, found in the Theban necropolis. The author does well to separate different sections of daily life into chapters that are easily read separately but have the same characters flowing through them.

I found it enjoyable, but my copy didn’t include the pictures, and so could have done with having the references to them removed. There was a paragraph repeated at the beginning of the penultimate and final chapters, which were also both the XIV chapter with the same titles.
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Egyptological nostalgia. Leonard Cottrell was a journalist who wrote a series of popular books on archaeology in the 1950s and 1960s (this particular book was first published in 1960). As soon as I got a library card I read every one I could find. This particular one turned up at somebody’s yard sale and I bought it for sentimental reasons. It’s still engaging, though, alas, a little outdated; one of the ironies of ancient history is that it changes every few years as new stuff gets dug up.


Life Under The Pharaohs would be more accurately titled Life Under Thutmoses III; Cottrell focuses on Rekhmire, Thutmoses III’s vizier. Cottrell mixes chapters of straightforward description with imagined episodes in Rekhmire’s life; he sails down the Nile from a visit to Egyptian possessions in Syria; attends a happy return party at his estate; his daughter flirt with various suitors; his sons go to school and join the army; there’s some sickness requiring a physician; and Rekhmire and his wife inspect their tomb. Cottrell invents a youngest son to allow for a discussion of Egyptian schooling, but the other sons and daughters are all attested.


Despite being 50-odd years old, all of this is pretty well done. Cottrell’s suggestion (based on work by Sir Alan Gardiner) that the Phoenician alphabet (and, therefore, ours) was originally based on Egyptian hieroglyphs is no longer accepted, but that’s the only major difference from modern understanding I noted. Cottrell’s quotes from Egyptian texts use the unfortunate convention of the time that the language should be translated to a sort of King James Bible English, which might be a little off-putting.


There are, of course, much more modern popular books – my personal favorites are Barbara Mertz’s Temples, Tombs, and Hieroglyphs and Red Land, Black Land. However, a young person interested in Egyptology or ancient history in general would not be badly misled by reading Cottrell. ( )

Hovers somewhere between history and historical fiction. Lively, entertaining, and out of date. ( )