The 5,000-Year-Old Puzzle: Solving a Mystery of Ancient Egypt

Description

Search for the secrets of a hidden tomb It is 1924, two years after the discovery of King Tut's tomb. Readers are invited to join a young boy, Will Hunt, as he and his family become part of an archaeological team led by world-famous Egyptologist Dr. George Reisner. Based on actual records of Reisner's history-making dig, Giza 7000X, this strikingly original picture book uses journal entries, funny postcards, and quirky cartoons to pull readers into an ancient unsolved mystery. Luminous paintings of the pyramids, informative sidebars and inventive collages, including authentic documents and archival photographs, help provide information and clues. When a secret tomb is uncovered, readers, along with Will, put together clues to discover: Whose tomb is this? Why was it hidden? And how can a mummy be missing from a sealed tomb? This illuminating book invites readers to participate in the process of archaeology as it provides a rare glimpse into the true stories that exist behind the objects in museums. The 5,000-Year-Old Puzzle is a 2003 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year. Review: informative and entertaining at most age levels - For our summer homeschool unit on Egypt - this book is fascinating. I have a family of boys -- the youngest is 6 - and we all enjoyed and used this book. It describes an archaeological adventure undertaken by a boy (11 years old?) and his family in 1924. (The boy is fictitious, the dig was a real event.) The scrapbook style shows money and postage stamps, maps, brochures, and timetables. The information is broken into chunks, with letters and postcards from the boy to a friend back home carrying the plot forward. Very fine illustrations and descriptions of how a systematic archaeological dig works. Best of all: the mystery about this particular burial still persists. It's a very engaging book - problem solving, adventure, great illustrations, and a very good text. (Book tie-in: Let's-Read-and-Find-Out-Science has a very good archeology book called "Archaeologists Dig For Clues") Older children can try their hand at producing hieroglyphics in this book; younger children can copy shapes and patterns from Egyptian artifacts or even string beads in some of the colors shown in the book. Vocabulary builders; vizier, sarcophagus, natron, amulets, jumble Review: Great for Young Archaeologists or Mystery Lovers - I bought this book because it is recommended on the Livingmath.net booklists. Although there's not a lot of actual math in the book, it's a great living book for touching on archaeology, critical thinking, and Ancient Egypt (specifically burial practices). I am not disappointed with my purchase. It's laid out somewhat like a scrapbook with lots of sidebar notes, postcards, and sketches adorning the basic story's text. Plenty of other reviews have covered the story itself, so I won't go into that. What I liked about the book is that it's a view of Ancient Egypt from an early 19th century archaeologist's perspective. The modern Egyptians also play a part in the story; it's not all about the American scientists. If you have a child who loves archaeology and solving mysteries, this book will be a winner. My daughter enjoyed coming up with her own explanations as we read through the book. Actually the mystery is not definitively solved. There are two possibilities, but the open-ended nature of the tomb's discovery is a great opportunity to practice logical thinking - does your explanation fit the facts?