Egypt, Gender and Popular Fiction
List of novels and plays discussed in "Women and Gender in Ancient Egypt"
(UC 150 004, Fall Term 1996)

The following is a listing of novels and plays with themes that deal with some aspect of gender in ancient Egypt for discussion in the First Year Seminar "Women and Gender in Ancient Egypt"; this isn't a complete listing for the topic by any means, but concentrates on books available in the UM Library system, or likely to be readily available otherwise. Students in this course chose one or more books from the list and wrote papers dicussing how these books related to the course. We then had an in-class discussion, in which we discussed what the books told us about modern popular understandings of gender in ancient Egypt, and how this related to attitudes towards women and gender roles in the context in which these books were written. There was special interest in how these works addressed images of women in power and ancient attitudes toward sexuality. As a counterpart to this discussion, we then watched excerpts from the 1953 Hollywood movie "The Egyptian" (adapted from the novel by Mika Waltari on the list below) and discussed how this depicted gender roles in ancient Egypt and also what it told us about attitudes towards women and ethnicity in 1950's American culture. Following up on these issues and concerns that recurred throughout the term, we also discussed recent uses of the themes of gender in Egypt in films and television programs, and the increasing use of ancient Egyptian women as images of empowerment within the African-American community. We concluded our course with an examination of women and gender in ancient Egypt as seen through the eyes of Afrocentrist scholars, and how Egyptologists have interacted with Afrocentrist work on ancient Egypt.

Of the works on the list below, the most popular for paper topics were by Anne Rice and William Shakespeare; students also found the books by Agatha Christie, Allen Drury, Anatole France, Theophile Gautier, Elizabeth Peters, George Bernard Shaw, Nicole Vidal and Ruth Whitman of special interest.

Terry G. Wilfong, 19 December 1996

Elizabeth Carter, Valley of the Kings, a Novel of Tutankhamen (GRADUATE LIBRARY, 828 C3236va)

Agatha Christie, Akhnaton (GRADUATE LIBRARY, 822.8 C555ak)

Agatha Christie, Death Comes as the End

Mary Chubb, Nefertiti Lived Here

Robin Cook, Sphinx

Allen Drury, God against the Gods (GRADUATE LIBRARY, 828 D797gn)

Allen Drury, Return to Thebes (GRADUATE LIBRARY, 828 D797re)

George Ebers, Varda: A Romance of Ancient Egypt (GRAD (at Buhr), 838 E16u tB43 1890)

Georg Ebers, An Egyptian Princess (2 vols.) (GRAD (at Buhr), 838 E16a tG88 1880 v. 1-2)

Anatole France, Thais (GRADUATE LIBRARY, 848 F8t tG95)

Theophile Gautier, The Mummy's Romance (GRADUATE LIBRARY, 848 G28r tC6)

Pauline Gedge, Child of the Morning (UNDERGRADUATE, PR 9199.3 .G32 C4 1993)

Norman Mailer, Ancient Evenings (GRADUATE LIBRARY, 828 M219an)

Barbara Michaels, Search the Shadows

Elizabeth Peters, Crocodile on the Sandbank

Mary Renault, The Persian Boy (UNDERGRADUATE, PR 6035 .E56 P5)

Anne Rice, The Mummy

Anne Rice, Queen of the Damned (UNDERGRADUATE, PS 3568 .I15 Q3 1988)

William Shakespeare, Anthony and Cleopatra (GRADUATE LIBRARY, 822.8 S53 A4 W67)

George Bernard Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra (GRADUATE LIBRARY, 822.8 S535c 1952)

Nicole Vidal, The Goddess Queen

Mika Waltari, The Egyptian (GRADUATE LIBRARY, PH 355 .W23 S63)

Ruth Whitman, Hatshepsut, speak to me, 1992.(GRADUATE LIBRARY, 828 W5955ha)