The Search for Nefertiti - Softcover

Fletcher, Joann

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0340831723 ISBN 13: 9780340831724

Publisher: TRAFALGAR SQUARE +, 2005

Synopsis

Nefertiti - 'the Beautiful' - is one of Egypt's most compelling and mysterious figures. She and her controversial pharaoh husband Akhenaten lived in perhaps the most tumultuous period in the country's long history, fascinating for both the enormous changes it brought to Egypt's culture and the many mysteries surrounding it. Top Egyptologist Dr Joann Fletcher has taken a fresh eye to the evidence and arrived at one of the most dramatic discoveries of recent times. She and her expert team have identified a long-forgotten mummy from the Valley of the Kings as the body of a female pharaoh of the Amarna Period, whom she believes is Nefertiti. It tells a story which will forever change the way we see Nefertiti - and women throughout Egyptian history. At last we see the full significance of her role as co-regent and later as Pharaoh, and understand the astonishing luxury and decadence of her life as the country around her disintegrated.

About this title

About the Author:

Professor Joann Fletcher is based in the Department of Archaeology at the University of York, where she teaches world mummification and funerary archaeology. She is also Consultant Egyptologist for Harrogate Museums and Arts and archaeology advisor to Barnsley and Wigan museums. Joann is the author of nine books and numerous articles including contributions to the BBC's History website. Among her many television appearances, the follow-up programme to 'The Search For Nefertiti' (televised as 'Mummifying Alan: Egypt's Last Secret') won a BAFTA, a Royal Television Society Award and an Association for International Broadcasting Award. She wrote and presented 'Life and Death in the Valley of the Kings' and 'Egypt's Lost Queens' for BBC2, and has recently completed a four-part series on the history of ancient Egypt again for BBC2.

From Publishers Weekly:

Oftentimes, the best scholarship uses the investigation of one thing (such as a historical episode or a scientific anomaly) to speak to wider human and cultural truths. Fletcher’s study of the life of the legendary queen Nefertiti is scholarship in just this sense. A learned and intensely personal book, it spans Fletcher’s near-lifelong involvement with the study of Egyptian culture, from her first trip to Egypt as a teenager in 1981 to her most recent excavation in February 2003. Along the way, she provides the reader with a concise introduction to ancient Egyptian history as well as a rough guide to the shifting ideological landscape of professional Egyptology over the last 200 years. Colored by patriarchal assumptions and the personal ambitions of the men who first excavated the desert, Egyptology tends to focus on the most powerful men of ancient Egypt: kings ruling their country (and families) with unquestioned authority. This book is in part an attempt to correct such biases and challenge reigning assumptions about gender roles in ancient Egypt. Fletcher specializes in the study of "everyday" objects like hair, jewelry and clothing that are often passed over or discarded by Egyptologists. The sections of the book devoted to them offer compelling revelations about the identities of anonymous royal figures and the complex relations among and within dynasties. Ultimately, whether or not readers agree with the hypothesis Fletcher draws from her thrilling examination of the so-called Younger Woman (who she believes is Nefertiti) interred in tomb KV.35 in the Valley of Kings is irrelevant; this book is an inspiring record of a life devoted to the highest scholarship. 24 pages of color photos.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: TRAFALGAR SQUARE +
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0340831723
• ISBN 13: 9780340831724
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 464