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

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?

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

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

Hard book to find used. I was happy to get 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

School text book arrived fine.

Really well done book. We enjoyed reading it. Love how photos from the actual dig were incorporated into the book.

Bought this book to go along with my son's lessons on Ancient Egypt. Just a really cute book. I would definitely recommend it.

Great book to use for our Egypt topic