Egyptian Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Goddesses, and Traditions of Ancient Egypt by Geraldine Pinch
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

First of all, I really need to mention that this is a good INTRO to Egyptian Mythology. It gives us a good basis for the Egyptian empire, time periods, landscapes, and influences before diving right into the gods and goddesses.

What this is NOT is a collection of stories a-la Edith Hamilton's Greek Mythology. It does have a number of stories from different time periods and gives us plausible morphologies of main gods as they become less important, giving rein to others. Again, this is natural for any society that changes and wishes to distance itself from the past, but I found myself a bit mystified in places.

Instead of delving deep enough to get us invested in Osirus, Isis, Seth, or Horus, it spends, in my humble opinion, too little time on any. And all the other gods and goddesses? We sometimes get little more than names.

This may be just something that I have an issue with or perhaps it's the legends themselves being a bit sparse on details. I'll just assume for now that it's the latter. But I want more.

In fact, I'm thinking I should go right to the source of the big things that we DO have -- such as Herodotus.

Still, it's very readable for what it is and it would be a very good reference material for a new student. So, there's that.

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