Samuel Peterson’s Reviews > Egypt: Land of the Pharaohs > Status Update

These last pages of the book are a timeline, references, and sources, but it's the timeline that I'm more focused on.
From what I'm seeing, it looks like ancient Egyptian royalty was mainly Sub-Saharan just from the sculptures of the different pharaohs. The populace may have been more diverse. But as time went on and the deserts didn't keep out invaders, Egypt became invaded from the Middle-East and Greece.

"About four years older than her preadolescent bridegroom, Ankhesenamen, third daughter of Akhenaten and Nefertiti, married Tutankhamen at the time of his coronation. Perhaps she inspired his affection early in the marriage by nurturing him during the difficult transition from boyhood to kingship. And the bonds may have deepened as the couple faced the tragedy of a stillborn child." Weren't they brother and sister?

Rameses II is probably the second most famous pharaoh of all of ancient Egypt with just the amount of monuments, campaigns, and recordings he made to himself. This includes a massive tomb to himself in the Valley of Kings.

"On November 14, 1165 BC, during the reign of Rameses III, the laborers of Deir el Medina became so exasperated by delays of supplies that they threw down their tools and marched off the job. Gathering together, the workmen staged what may have been the first sit-down strike in history...'It is because of hunger and thirst that we came here. There is no clothing, no fat, no fish, no vegetables.'" Socialism FTW!

The laborers reported to their tomb as if a factory worker on a timecard, and there is even a list of various excuses! "Eye trouble" and "brewing beer" were popular ones (you're in the desert and in Egypt, so understandable), but "could not come to work because he was busy embalming his mother" takes the cake for most inventive!

"The wives of the workmen cared for their many children, baked bread, and wove clothing. Under Egyptian law, these women of long ago had property rights more advanced than those of the wives of the American and British archeologists studying them. They held title to their own wealth and to a third of all material goods." And in some cases today, wives still don't have their own fortune or inherit it from their parent

"Contrary to popular belief, the royal tomb artisans were not slave laborers but highly skilled artisans. They lived with their families in mud-brick houses with flat roofs made of wood beams and matting." See.

They even had tweezers, razors, wigs, and cosmetic boxes!

"During his four-year reign, Ay eradicated inscriptions honoring Tutankhamen, replacing them with ones glorifying himself, and, within a few generations, the boy-king's name was routinely omitted from the official lists of Egypt's rulers, just as Akhenaten's was. But in an ironic twist of history, it is Tutankhamen who has become celebrated around the world." That omission had saved this treasure trove it seems like.

Much like later Roman art showing a glimpse of the attitudes, thoughts, and humors of all walks of Roman life, ancient Egyptians were very much the same way with their art and its varieties.