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

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

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?

We read this book as part of our homeschool curriculum, and everyone enjoyed it!

It’s a great story about a boy in 1925 exploring the pyramids. Gives history in a way that makes the kids beg to hear the next page

Loved the content and format, both.

Wonderful book, my children loved the mystery

Hard book to find used. I was happy to get it.

Great concept, I just wish it was all factual.

Great book to use for our Egypt topic