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This book combines the Janssen's two earlier works into one volume. Both make extensive use of literary sources and artefacts, particularly those which are less well known to present a compelling portrait of two slightly neglected areas of study in Ancient Egypt, childhood and old age. Growing up includes sections on various life stages: the baby, early childhood, school, adolesence, as well as aspects such as dress, and play. Getting old looks at Egyptian perceptions of old age and the depiction of the old in art, at practical matters such as care of the elderly, pensions and inheritance law, and at the place of ancestors in Egyptian thought. The sections conclude with a more in depth look at royal experiences of childhood and old age, for which the sources are obviously more abundant. Both sections of the book have been updated slightly and corrections added.

The Indian subcontinent offers an extraordinary visual feast. Considering Indian art within a chronological framework, Vidya Dehejia analyses the great cities of the Indus civilization, the serene Buddha image, the intriguing art of cave sites, the sophisticated temple-building traditions, the luxurious art of the Mughal court, the palaces and pavilions of Rajasthan, the churches of Portuguese Goa, the various forms of art in the British Raj and the issues related to taking Indian art into the twenty-first century.

At this juncture the traveller Rabbi Benjamin came to Egypt. Some three years earlier he had left his native place-Tudela, on the Ebro in the north of Spain. After passing through the prosperous towns which lie on the Gulf of Lyons, he visited Rome and South Italy. From Otranto he crossed over to Corfu, traversed Greece, and then came to Constantinople, of which he gives an interesting account. Very telling, for example, are the words: "They hire from amongst all nations warriors called Barbarians to fight with the Sultan of the Seljuks; for the natives are not warlike, but are as women who have no strength to fight." After visiting the Islands of the Aegean, as well as Rhodes and Cyprus, he passed on to Antioch, and followed the well-known southern route skirting the Mediterranean, visiting the important cities along the coast, all of which were then in the hands of the Franks. Having regard to the strained relations between the Christians and Saracens, and to the fights and forays of the Latin knights, we can understand that Benjamin had to follow a very circuitous way to enable him to visit all the places of note in Palestine.