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The 5,000-Year Old Puzzle: Solving a Mystery of Ancient Egypt
Claudia Logan
Illustrated by Melissa Sweet
Fiction and Non-Fiction
Ages 8 to 10
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002, 0-374-32335-6
It is 1924 and two years after Howard Carter discovered the famous tomb of Tutankhamun. Will Hunt’s father is an archeologist and he has been invited to go to Egypt to work on a dig. More than anything Will hopes that he and his mother will be able to go to Egypt too. Will and his friend Sam have formed a King Tut Club and Will has done everything he can to learn as much as possible about ancient Egypt.
At last Will learns that he is going to be joining his father on Dr. George Reisner’s expedition to Giza. He is thrilled and can’t wait to leave. Of course there are many preparations to be made. The family is going to be away for a year, perhaps longer, and they have to take a lot of things with them.
Finally on December 19th Will and his parents leave. He writes Sam some postcards telling him what the journey is like and on January 17th, 1925, Will arrives at Harvard Camp in Giza. The camp is right next to the three great pyramids at Giza.
At first nothing happens for Will and he doesn’t find or do anything particularly interesting, but then he inadvertently reveals the secret entrance to a tunnel. The archeologists carefully work their way down this passageway only to come to a dead end. After some more exploration in the area the archeologists find the entrance to a secret pit which they hope might be an undisturbed tomb.
Days of digging follow and hours of backbreaking work removing rubble and blocks of stone. Finally they get to the bottom and sure enough there is an undisturbed tomb there. Who does it belong to and what will they find then they get to look inside?
Based on the real diary entries and dig records of Dr. George Reisner who was the director of the Harvard University/Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Expedition, this account of the discovery of a site called Giza 7000X will show young readers how fascinating it is to study the past by examining archeological sites. The discovery of the tomb at Giza 7000X has fueled all kinds of theories about what took place there all those thousands of years ago. Even today we cannot really be sure what real story of the tomb is
Presented in the form of a diary/scrapbook, this excellent picture book with its carefully researched text, its informative side bars and boxes, and its wonderful artwork, is a pleasure to read and look at. As they read Will’s account readers will see how much work goes into an archeological dig and how much of that work is dirty, uncomfortable, dull, and frustrating. In addition every little thing that one finds has to be accounted for – in short it is a precise science.
Both entertaining and informative, this is an excellent title to share with children.
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