The Egyptians created a world of supernatural forces so vivid, powerful and inescapable that controlling one's destiny within it was a constant preoccupation. In life, supernatural forces manifested themselves through misfortune and illness,and after death were faced for eternity in the Otherworld, along with the divine gods who controlled the universe. The Book of the Dead empowered the reader to overcome the dangers lurking in the Otherworld and to become one with the gods who governed. Barry Kemp selects a number of spells to explore who and what the Egyptians feared and the kind of assistance that the Book offered them, revealing a relationship between the human individual and the divine quite unlike that found in the major faiths of the modern world.

For beginners being a series of historical, funereal, moral, religious and mythological texts printed in hieroglyphic characters, together with a transliteration and complete vocabulary.

Describes the techniques and the reasons for the use of mummification in ancient Egypt.

The protagonist has Egyptian roots going back many generations: on her father’s side, to the expulsion of the Jews of Spain in 1492, when seven brothers of the Kastil family (from Castilla) landed on the Gaza coast after many trials and tribulations. Her mother’s side goes back even further, to the only family that Jewish history has ignored: the ones who said “No” to Moses and stayed in Egypt. After migrating to Israel in the 1950s and settling on a kibbutz—from which they were soon expelled for Stalinism—this storied clan moved to Tel Aviv. In this unconventional family saga, Orly Castel-Bloom blends fact with fiction, history with legend, reimagining the lives of her forebears in unforgettable prose.

This unique book presents eight seasonal rites for performance at the solstices, equinoxes and cross-quarter days, for devotees of the ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses.