A review by redhairedashreads
Egypt's Golden Couple: When Akhenaten and Nefertiti Were Gods on Earth by John Darnell, Colleen Darnell

3.0

 

This was a well researched look at the lives of Akhenaten and Nefertiti. While I found aspects of this book to be fascinating and engaging, other parts of this book felt a bit dense and some of the created scenes felt a bit unnecessary since there is no evidence to back them up. 

The Darnell’s did a great job at presenting Akhenaten’s story through descriptions taken from art, tombs, and other physical evidence from his time. These parts of the book I really enjoyed and provided an interesting look at this ruler, but still a lot we don’t know. I will say that the direct translation of some of the hieroglyphics was a bit weird in audio format because of the missing characters, brackets, and question marks within. 

The created scenes that are in every chapter were ok but hard to believe that is how it happened because there is no daily text that back up these created scenes. I know they are taking scenes from reliefs and statuary to make these scenes but it took me away from the actual facts most of the time. 

Overall, this was interesting but not exactly what I was expecting from this book. I think it's a good look at Akhenaten and Nefertiti’s rule but also could provide false misconceptions with these “scenes”.