Secrets of the Mummies: Uncovering the Bodies of Ancient Egyptians

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University and an avid outdoor recreationist. She is the
author of several books, including The Mountain Is Moving: Japanese
Women’s Lives, Kurlek and Margaret Laurence: T

Secrets of the Mummies begins dramatically with the formal unwrapping of
a mummy, shows scientists at work examining mummies, then switches to
scientific explanations of the mummies and to details of embalming.
Photographs fuel the researchers’ curiosity. Stories of grave robbers
serve as dramatic material, as does ground mummy powder used for
medicinal cures.

The well-researched volume is roughly half pictorial and half textual.
Individual stories, such as those of Tutankhamen, King of Egypt, c. 1358
B.C., and of Nakht, a typical young weaver of fine linen, are well
written. Greg Ruhl’s full-page, color illustrations complement the
text well, blending realism and romance in imagined scenes.

Author Shelley Tanaka has written most of the others books in the
award-winning “I Was There” series, including In the Time of Knights
(2000), The Lost Temple of the Aztecs (1998), Graveyards of the
Dinosaurs (1998), The Buried City of Pompeii (1997), On Board the
Titanic (1996), and Discovering the Iceman (1996). In Secrets of the
Mummies, she has another winner. Highly recommended.