HISTORY / Ancient / Egypt

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Ana Ruiz’s fascination with ancient Egypt began 25 years ago, and her delight is clear as she reconstructs and interprets for us life along the Nile. She looks at the ancient Egyptians’ family life, their homes and furnishings, food and drink for everyday and for festivals, and through the dynasties, their varied and exotic clothes, make-up and beautiful jewellery. She shows how from the time they settled, some 9,000 years ago, along the banks of the Nile, the great river was the life-giving source of their work, their prosperous trade in exotic spices and artifacts, and their means of transport.They adored catsTheir national drink was beerTheir ‘Book of the Dead’ contains 200 magic spellsThey invented the horoscope more than 6,000 years agoThey made divorce easy, but would cut off an unfaithful wife’s noseTheir goddess of birth was a hippopotamusTheir god of fertility was a crocodileThe largest pyramid took 20 years and 20,000 men to build. It used 2.3 million blocks of limestone and granite, each weighing between 2 and 15 tons.She explores their laws and government, their military feats and their recreation, bringing the ancient Egyptians to life in all their detail. She gives us absorbing descriptions of their many gods, their beliefs about death and immortality, magic and divination, the importance of dreams and symbolism, and their stunning achievements in architecture, astronomy, language, the arts and engineering.Using archeological finds to decipher Egypt’s past, Ana Ruiz gives us a richly textured and intriguing picture of how daily life was for the people of ancient Egypt.