Pharaohs and Foot Soldiers: One Hundred Ancient Egyptian Jobs You Might Have Desired or Dreaded (Jobs in History) - Hardcover

Butcher, Kristin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1554511712 ISBN 13: 9781554511716

Publisher: Annick Press, 2009

Synopsis

Imagine being an interpreter of dreams in ancient Egypt.

What was the daily grind like for the ancient Egyptians? Imagine it's your job to carve elaborate tombs out of rock formations (it will take years to do) or man an army outpost in the extreme heat of the desert. You might have worked transporting some of the over 2 million stones for the Great Pyramid or engineered irrigation projects along the Nile. Pharaohs and Foot Soldiers offers an innovative look at the jobs that kept Ancient Egypt running for 3,000 years.

Among the 100 careers profiled you'll also find reed cutters (who worked naked), sandal makers (many went barefoot) and even embalmers (pulling out organs took special training). Whether prestigious or poor, Egyptians had to be tough, trustworthy, stealthy and skilled to get by.

Complete with a fact-filled introduction, a comprehensive timeline and playful illustrations throughout, Pharaohs and Foot Soldiers will inspire readers to imagine how they may have lived out their days as a member of one of history's most fascinating civilizations.

About this title

About the Author

A former teacher, Kristin Butcher has written 10 juvenile and young adult novels. She lives in Campbell River, B.C.

Martha Newbigging has illustrated many books, including Research Ate My Brain and Attack of the Killer Video Book. She lives in rural Ontario.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction

This book is about ancient Egypt and the sorts of jobs you might have worked at if you lived there. Egypt is located in Africa. That's the huge continent shaped like a horse's head. On the right side of it, beside the horse's ear, is the Red Sea. Follow the Red Sea up until you bump into land. That's Egypt.

Most of Egypt is desert. It is rocky, and sandy, and very hot. The only place people can live is along the Nile River, which runs right through the middle of Egypt. The Nile is the longest river in the world. It starts at Lake Victoria, in central Africa, and flows north into the Mediterranean Sea. As it passes through Egypt it turns the nearby desert into a green valley. Because of this, people say Egypt is the gift of the Nile.

Today the Nile provides water, electricity, transportation, and soil for farming as well as beautiful scenery. If you took a boat ride up the Nile, you'd pass many bustling cities.

That's all very fine, but this book isn't about modern Egypt. It's about ancient Egypt, the time of pyramids and pharaohs (far-rows). It's about Egypt the way it was 5,000 years ago! That's not as long ago as dinosaurs, but it is still so far in the past that it's almost impossible to imagine. Of course there were no computers, telephones, or cars back then, but for quite a while ancient Egyptians didn't know what a wheel was either, and they'd never even seen horses!

That didn't stop them from building an amazing civilization that lasted 3,000 years. The best part is that they left mountains of evidence (well, pyramids of evidence, actually) of that entire time. This book is going to explore some of that evidence--the monuments, the tombs, the treasures, and the jobs. Especially the jobs.

About this edition

• Publisher: Annick Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1554511712
• ISBN 13: 9781554511716
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 96
• Illustrator: Newbigging Martha