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Daily Life in Ancient Egypt: Recreating Lahun. By KASIA SZPAKOWSKA. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing, 2008. 244 pp. $35.00 (paper).
A most daunting task for an Egyptologist is to undertake the writing of another book on the daily life practices of the ancient Egyptians. To do so makes the author subject to numerous, perhaps unwarranted, critiques questioning the need for another volume discussing something covered in so many other volumes. Szpakowska contends that her volume is uniquely placed in that it addresses daily life for a specific time frame (in this case the Middle Kingdom period-2025-1650 B.C.). She argues that most volumes lump together all classes of Egyptian society (elites and all others) from all periods when talking about the social and cultural aspects of Egypt. That gives a misguided view of the dynamic nature of ancient Egyptian society and suggests that other studies on daily life are doing a disservice to the continually changing nature of Egyptian culture. If for no other reason than that, this volume breaks new ground in how we need to examine Egyptian culture. In addition, she has chosen the Middle Kingdom time frame because many scholars of ancient Egypt (especially philologists) have argued that that time period was the "classical period" in Egypt. Thus, the "empire" period glitz of Tutankhamun and Akhenaten do...