Dangerous Days In Ancient Egypt

Dangerous Days In Ancient Egypt
Rating: 5/5
Buy or Borrow: Buy 
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher! 

Think that Ancient Egypt is just a load of old obelisks? Don't bet your afterlife on it. 
Ancient Egypt should be deader than most of our yesterdays. After all it was at its height 5,000 years ago. Yet we still marvel at its mummies and under over its pyramids. It's easy to forget these people once lived and laughed, loved and breathed...though not for very long. 

These where dangerous days for princes and peasants alike. In Ancient Egypt- a world of wars and woes, poverty and plagues- life was short. Forty was a good age to reach. A pharaoh who was eaten by a hippo ended up as dead as a ditch-digger stung by a scorpion. Unwrap the bandages and you'll find that the Egyptians' bizarre adventures in life were every bit as fascinating as the monuments they left to their deaths. 

As a child, I was, much as I am today, obsessed with history. What was a child obsessed with history to read?! Horrible Histories. Even as a child I didn't read the kind of history books I read today, namely thick books with tiny type, or actual text books just for the fun of it. I had quite the collection of Horrible Histories books, as well as the Science and Geography ones, I used to read them yeah, but I also used to use them to help me with homework or in the case of Science, just plain understand what the hell I was being taught. Science was not a strong point of mine, to be honest. I'm actually quite sad that I ended up taking them all to the charity shop a few years ago, when I was a teenager and trying to make my room 'minimalistic'. It is not, nor will ever be that, but I didn't know that then. Anyway, off they went, and I do regret it. Perhaps one day I'll buy them all back. 

I'm now, supposedly, an 'adult'. It's like Terry Deary knows how much I miss the fun of Horrible Histories, because here he is with a book that, at least to me, seems a lot like Horrible Histories...for adults. This is the fourth book, I'm actually surprised I haven't stumbled across the others before and I'll be adding them to my list! 

Anyway, we all know I'm obsessed with Ancient Egypt above all other time periods, not really sure why, but whatever. So it's not really a surprise that this caught my eye. I have to say, while the book had a lot of things that I already knew....it also had a lot of things I didn't know. For instance, the day to day lives of the peasants of Ancient Egypt. The book contains a hell of a lot of information....but it's concise. There's no tiny font and endless pages. It's maximum information without being boring. 

There's Did You Know boxes, timelines, bullet points, lists, quotes and more as well as paragraphs of information. The book is divided in to different sections, and each is packed with little mini sections. Different rulers, different archaeologists and so on. There where actually some female archaeologists that I, shamefully, had no idea existed. 

Dangerous Days in Ancient Egypt is perfect if you want to know more about the time period without having to read endless pages. It's easy to read and easy to understand without being too dumbed down. It's amusing and makes you chuckle every so often. It was brilliantly written to be honest, the same tone as Horrible Histories from what I remember, almost chatty, some sarcasm, plenty of wit. There's even a bit about curses. We all love a good curse don't we? 

Seriously, I couldn't resist using a Mummy GIF anymore, be thankful I only used the one! 

Dangerous Days in Ancient Egypt is an informative, yet fun read, and has plenty of knowledge to share with you including a step by step guide to mummifying someone! There's even a grave robbers guide in case you fancy a change of career. This book brought me a good couple of hours of entertainment and it's great to have the format of Horrible Histories, but changed up for adults to read, Deary makes history fun and he always has, and not a lot of history books manage to do that, they're usually quite dry. I'm excited to see what period of history he will cover next! 

If you want to pick up the other books we have.....

-Dangerous Days In The Roman Empire
-Dangerous Days On The Victorian Railways 
-Dangerous Days In Elizabethan England

The Roman one has a freaking Carry On quote on the back and I laughed for way longer than I should have! I'll definitely be getting around to picking these up, and I really think you all should too!