Briefly Noted

Explorers and Artists in the Valley of the Kings

Catharine Roehrig (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2001) 96 PP., $29.50

Catharine Roehrig, a curator at New York’s Metropolitan Museum, tells the story of the 19th-century European artists, scholars and explorers who rediscovered the ancient civilization of Egypt. Her informative text is illustrated by large, brilliantly colored reproductions of the sketches, etchings and paintings of Egyptian monuments created by these first European travelers to western Thebes.

The Mystery of the Egyptian Mummy

Joyce Filer (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003) 48 PP., $20

The 2,000-year-old remains of a Theban priest named Hornedjitef show that he lived to the ripe old age of 60 and suffered from arthritis. The history of mummification is full of outrageous facts, certain to please readers from 8 and up: Who would have thought that an American factory owner recycled mummy linen to make brown paper bags, or that ancient embalmers sometimes tucked extra limbs inside a mummy’s wrappings?