Book Review: Dinner with King Tut

DIY Archaeology

Dinner with King Tut is a strange sort of beast: let’s call it an anti-sphinx. Like the sphinx it’s composed of three dissimilar parts—not the face of a woman, the wings of a bird and the haunches of a lion, but science, fiction (but not science fiction) and DIY—where DIY involves the author learning how to knap stones, how to tattoo himself, to style hair like an ancient Roman matron, bake bread for Egyptian pyramid builders, and operate a trebuchet, among other skills once necessary for a precarious survival in different eras at different points on the globe. Also: tanning and trepanning.

And this sphinx not only poses riddles it tries its best to answer them, through the discipline of experimental archaeology. Which, if you (like me) have never heard of this field, you’re in for a series of fascinating discoveries, from a Turkish city where one’s relatives where buried beneath one’s bed to the unusual height of Chinese eunuchs.

Each chapter includes a wealth of information about a particular culture, a fictional tale which is illustrative of life (and death) in that culture, and the author’s own experiments (usually under the supervision of an expert, who may be a “professional” archaeologist or may be an “amateur” with a burning passion for their subject). The fictional tales almost work like mysteries, with the other two sections providing the clues necessary to solve them.

And: it works. And: it’s informative. And: wonder of wonders: it’s fun. Especially eye-opening for me was the chapter on the Polynesian navigators and settlers of Oceania. Science writer Sam Keane steers us with bonhomie and amazing perseverance through a series of experiences (he suggests that experimental archaeology should be called experiential archaeology) at sometimes considerable risk of bodily harm and even oftener the ruination of his taste buds. If you thought archaeology was sifting through sand for broken bits of pot sherds, this book will disabuse you of that notion.

Dinner with King Tut will be published July 8. Available for pre-order now.Did I mention fun?