Egyptomania: Our Three Thousand Year Obsession with the Land of the Pharaohs

Bob Brier, PhD

Jan 2023 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Christopher Douyard

About this audiobook

The world has always been fascinated with ancient Egypt. When the Romans conquered Egypt, it was really Egypt that conquered the Romans. Cleopatra captivated both Caesar and Marc Antony and soon Roman ladies were worshipping Isis and wearing vials of Nile water around their necks. What is it about ancient Egypt that breeds such obsession and imitation? Egyptomania explores the burning fascination with all things Egyptian and the events that fanned the flames-from ancient times, to Napoleon's Egyptian campaign, to the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb by Howard Carter in the 1920s. For forty years, Bob Brier, one of the world's foremost Egyptologists, has been amassing one of the largest collections of Egyptian memorabilia and seeking to understand the pull of ancient Egypt on our world today. In this original and groundbreaking book, he explores our three-thousand-year-old fixation with recovering Egyptian culture and its meaning. He traces our enthrallment with the mummies that seem to have cheated death and the pyramids that as if they will last forever. Drawing on his personal collection-from Napoleon's twenty volume Egypt encyclopedia to Howard Carter's letters written from the Valley of the Kings as he was excavating-this is an inventive and mesmerizing tour of how an ancient civilization endures in ours today.

About the author

Bob Brier is Senior Research Fellow at Long Island University, USA, and is a world-famous Egyptologist. He is the author of The Murder of Tutankhamen, Ancient Egyptian Magic, Egyptian Mummies, and Secret of the Great Pyramid. He was host to TLC's series The Great Egyptians, The World of Pyramids, and Mummy Detective.

Christopher Douyard took the backroads to audiobook narration, though he is no stranger to performing. Christopher has nourished a passion for books and storytelling since his youth, when he would devour Tolkien and the Encyclopedia Britannica with equal abandon. He records from his studio in central Connecticut.