Product Review

This stunning volume is a rarity among Ancient Egyptian art books in being devoted not to remains of royalty but to the tombs of private people―it is the first book in English on this subject.Sigrid Hodel-Hoenes leads us on an expedition to the cemetery used by the officials of New Kingdom Egypt on the eastern flanks of the Western mountain across from Thebes, between the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens. She examines the contents of eleven tombs belonging to civil servants, the private people of this ancient city. (All of these tombs are currently accessible to the public in a vast open-air museum.) Lavishly illustrated, with many color photographs and a selection of line drawings, the book provides details of the location, layout, structure, and decoration of the tombs. Hodel-Hoenes addresses such subjects as the two-dimensional art of New Kingdom Thebes, the contents of the tombs, the pigments used in the artists' paints, and the symbolism of the colors and the scenes depicted in the tomb paintings and reliefs A generous bibliography facilitates further exploration of the tombs and their meaning.