LIVES OF THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS

Across one hundred lives, Toby Wilkinson explores the diversity of human experience in the ancient world’s greatest civilization. Some are pharaohs and queens such as Akhenaten, Nefertiti, Ramesses II and Tiye. Others are lesser-known but equally engaging: Imhotep, architect of the first pyramid; Perniankhu, the court dwarf; and the royal sculptor Bak. Equally illuminating are the lives of commoners, so rarely given their own voice: ordinary men and women who include a doctor, a dentist, a housewife, a musician - and a serial criminal.