Tutankhamun’s Trumpet: The Story of Ancient Egypt in 100 Objects
TOBY WILKINSON
(PICADOR, 496 PP, £25)
Tablet bookshop price £22.50 • tel 020 7799 4064

There were some usefully meticulous characters in ancient Egypt. Every time they sealed a box, ready for Tutankhamun’s tomb, they attached a note listing its contents. These lists not only helped to identify the purpose of some of the objects inside but also, when various early tomb-raiders had helped themselves and run away, they allowed their successors, namely Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon, to identify precisely what was missing. Carter estimated that 60 per cent of the boy-king’s jewels had been pilfered.

And yet, what remained! When the tomb was opened 100 years ago there were, literally, enough extraordinary and magnificent objects to fill more than five books this size. Toby Wilkinson has chosen 100 of his favourites, gloriously illustrated and arranged in 10 chapters, to tell the story of the 3,000 years of Egyptian history they represent. Academic Egyptologists were once reminded that “it is the business of the archaeologist to wake the dreaming dead, not to send the living to sleep”: Wilkinson needs no such warning. His knowledge is beyond phenomenal, yet he imparts it with such verve and style that never for a moment is there the slightest chance of boredom. In fact, this might well be the only book you will ever need to understand the realm of the pharaohs.