An Egyptian Bestiary - Tapa dura

This is an illustrated volume showing the richness of the Pharaonic fauna in all forms of artistic expression: painting, sculpture, relief carving, architectural ornamentation and hieroglyphs. They range from realism in the depiction of birds and beasts, both wild and domesticated, useful and harmful, with which the people of the Nile Valley came into daily contact, to hieratic stylization in portraying the pantheon of animal-headed gods and the sacred and fabulous creatures that inhabited their devotional, funerary and magic world. The captions and descriptions that accompany the photographs place each animal depicted in its proper context in relation to man, to the environment and to the gods.

Philippe Germond is a Professor of Egyptology at the University of Geneva.