Your top five books

Book Reviews
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Hopefully, I have put this in the right category and that there’s not a similar topic elsewhere.

If you had to choose just five books to recommend to someone starting out in Kemeticism, what would they be?

If you could only keep five books on Egypt and Kemeticism, what would they be?

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Five is a hard choice but here goes in no particular order…

  1. Dictionary Of Egyptians Gods and Goddesses by George Hart. A solid reliable reference.

  2. Ancient Egyptian Divination and Magic, Eleanor L Harris. Another good bit of research

  3. Literature Of Ancient Egypt: An Anthology of Stories, Instructions and Poetry. Edited by William Kelly Simspon. My go to book on all stories. Been around a long time this one!

  4. How to Read Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs. Mark Collier. A great book on the basics and the required hand book for the EES course on the same.

  5. All the books by Lesley Jackson at Avalonia on Hathor, Thoth and Sekhmet.

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Definitely a tough one and I’m going to have to tackle the questions separately. My five recommendations for a beginner:

  1. ‘The Ancient Gods Speak’ / ‘The Oxford Essential Guide to Egyptian Mythology’ (same book, different titles), Redford, D. B. (Ed.)

This is a handy encyclopedia-style book which covers a wide number of topics.

  1. ’100 Hieroglyphs: Think Like an Egyptian’, Kemp, B.

Surprisingly awesome little book that gives detailed explanations of 100 hieroglyphs and their underlying concepts.

  1. ‘Exploring Religion in Ancient Egypt’, Quirke, S.

Benefits from being a recent publication and so more up to date on many aspects of the religion. Also benefits from being written by a well respected Egyptologist and not specifically for a kemetic/esoteric audience, in my opinion.

  1. ‘Magic in Ancient Egypt’, Pinch, G.

Essentially a more beginner friendly version of Ritner’s Mechanics, from which the contents are heavily derived.

  1. ‘The Egyptian Philosophers: Ancient African Voices from Imhotep to Akhenaten’, Asante, M. K.

I’ve not even gotten around yet read this one myself, but it comes recommended by and used as a text book by someone whose opinion I respect.

Bonus recommendation: If you have an iPad or iPhone, the “hieroglyphic dictionary aaou” / “aaou hieroglyph dictionary” app is absolutely brilliant. Just make sure you buy the correct version of the app for your device (iPad version and iPhone version are separate apps.)

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I agree that the Geraldine Pinch book is great! Don’t know the others so will have to take a look. Of course Kemp is always good too! Thanks

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I really must add the Pinch book to my wishlist, everyone recommends it. An app sounds very handy, I’ll check that out.

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You could also just try diving into Ritner’s. It’s available as a free download from the OI: https://oi.uchicago.edu/research/publications/saoc/saoc-54-mechanics-ancient-egyptian-magical-practice-fourth-printing-2008

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