From the dawn of history to the death of Cleopatra, ancient Egypt was home to larger-than-life personalities. Across one hundred lives, Toby Wilkinson explores the true character and diversity of human experience in the ancient world’s greatest civilization. Some of those profiled are famous: pharaohs and queens such as Akhenaten, Nefertiti, Ramesses II and Tiye. Others are lesser known but equally engaging: Imhotep, architect of the first pyramid; Perniankhu, the court dwarf; and the royal sculptor Bak. Equally illuminating are the lives of commoners, so rarely given their own voice: ordinary men and women who include a doctor, a dentist, a housewife, a musician – and a serial criminal.

Dr Toby Wilkinson is a Bye-Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge. The author of many books on ancient Egypt, he won the Hessell-Tiltman prize in 2011 for The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt: The History of a Civilisation from 3000 BC to Cleopatra. .Among his previous books are Genesis of the Pharaohs and Lives of the Ancient Egyptians, both published by Thames & Hudson.