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A review by baybay11098
Red Land, Black Land: Daily Life in Ancient Egypt by Barbara Mertz
3.75
I've always been fascinated by ancient Egypt. As a kid, I fell for many of the myths and legends, thinking that mummies were something to be frightened of and could be hiding in my closet when I go to sleep. When I grew up, I started rectifying my mistakes and learning about what these people were actually like.
Unfortunately, when you go to learn about them, almost every popular source talks about the pharaohs, the pyramids, and the battles against other peoples. Nobody talks about what the fuck these people actually did all the time. I wondered about that. Did they dance? Did they drink? (Apparently everyone else except me knew they drank beer) Were they generally happy? What kind of games did they play?
So last year I was looking for a good book to teach me these things. I don't care about which Pharaoh it was who built this pyramid. I don't care about which Pharaoh usurped the throne. This novel came across my eyes in my search and after telling a bunch of people about it, I received it as a gift. Last Christmas, of course.
I finally read it and enjoyed it so much. It was exactly what I wanted. Mertz gives a detailed but general view of these people's daily life, sometimes with an addition of her personal opinion on theories and jokes about funny stories.
Basically every general topic is discussed in here. Birth, toys, clothing, apprenticeship, math, puberty, sex, marriage, work, laws, holidays, food and drink, medicine, religion and science and magic, death, funerals, and the list goes on.
But what is really amazing about this book is how it puts you into the mind of an Egyptian. She makes you break away from your modern conceptions of things like magic and gods so that you remove your biases. Magic, science, and religion were intertwined for these people, and she makes sure that you understand that so you can look at stuff like their medicine and funeral traditions with empathy and understanding, instead of seeing them as "primitive" or inferior.
Mertz also points out when evidence is lacking or when she disagrees with other Egyptologists, which allows you to come to your own conclusions and gives you ideas on what to read next. It's startling how much my perception of this group of people changed. It was crazy to me to read, for example, that the period we think of as "ancient Egypt" is so long that even for some of the Egyptians the pyramids were 3,000 years old. And they would visit them and steal from them just like European archaeologists of the last 200 years.
My favorite excerpts were the translations of primary documents, such as a father's angry letters to his family back home, a romantic poem, and a cry from a husband to his dead wife, who he says is responsible for his bad luck lately.
I came away from this novel feeling like I lived a second life. It was full of interesting information, where at times every other sentence had my eyebrows raised in that "damn thats interesting" way. In a world full of history books touching on war, kings, and imperialism, it was nice to finally read one about normal people. People who, even though they lived thousands of years ago, also loved to dance, eat, drink, and grieved for their departed loved ones just as I do. And I not only learned about their life, but learned how to truly change my mindset and world view and put myself in somebody else's shoes.
Unfortunately, when you go to learn about them, almost every popular source talks about the pharaohs, the pyramids, and the battles against other peoples. Nobody talks about what the fuck these people actually did all the time. I wondered about that. Did they dance? Did they drink? (Apparently everyone else except me knew they drank beer) Were they generally happy? What kind of games did they play?
So last year I was looking for a good book to teach me these things. I don't care about which Pharaoh it was who built this pyramid. I don't care about which Pharaoh usurped the throne. This novel came across my eyes in my search and after telling a bunch of people about it, I received it as a gift. Last Christmas, of course.
I finally read it and enjoyed it so much. It was exactly what I wanted. Mertz gives a detailed but general view of these people's daily life, sometimes with an addition of her personal opinion on theories and jokes about funny stories.
Basically every general topic is discussed in here. Birth, toys, clothing, apprenticeship, math, puberty, sex, marriage, work, laws, holidays, food and drink, medicine, religion and science and magic, death, funerals, and the list goes on.
But what is really amazing about this book is how it puts you into the mind of an Egyptian. She makes you break away from your modern conceptions of things like magic and gods so that you remove your biases. Magic, science, and religion were intertwined for these people, and she makes sure that you understand that so you can look at stuff like their medicine and funeral traditions with empathy and understanding, instead of seeing them as "primitive" or inferior.
Mertz also points out when evidence is lacking or when she disagrees with other Egyptologists, which allows you to come to your own conclusions and gives you ideas on what to read next. It's startling how much my perception of this group of people changed. It was crazy to me to read, for example, that the period we think of as "ancient Egypt" is so long that even for some of the Egyptians the pyramids were 3,000 years old. And they would visit them and steal from them just like European archaeologists of the last 200 years.
My favorite excerpts were the translations of primary documents, such as a father's angry letters to his family back home, a romantic poem, and a cry from a husband to his dead wife, who he says is responsible for his bad luck lately.
I came away from this novel feeling like I lived a second life. It was full of interesting information, where at times every other sentence had my eyebrows raised in that "damn thats interesting" way. In a world full of history books touching on war, kings, and imperialism, it was nice to finally read one about normal people. People who, even though they lived thousands of years ago, also loved to dance, eat, drink, and grieved for their departed loved ones just as I do. And I not only learned about their life, but learned how to truly change my mindset and world view and put myself in somebody else's shoes.