Title: How the Amazon Queen Fought the Prince of Egypt

Author and Illustrator: Tamara Bower

Date: 2005

Tags: 7+, Picture Book, Egypt, Mesopotamian, Setting: Ancient, Protagonist: Female, Racially/ethnically diverse character(s), Award winner: BCCB Blue Ribbon Nonfiction Book Award

This story is fictional, but it was written a very long time ago. How the Amazon Queen Fought the Prince of Egypt is a retelling of a portion the Inaros-Petubastis Cycle, a episodic Egyptian novel written in Ptolemaic Egypt. It only survives today on a fragmentary ancient Egyptian papyrus from the Roman period. The modern book retells the story of an encounter between the Amazons, here Assyrian warrior women rather than Scythian horse nomads, and a minor Egyptian prince. The illustrations are based on ancient Egyptian and Assyrian art. The coolest page, in my opinion, is a two-page spread of the Amazon princess Ashteshyt sneaking into the Egyptian camp that is inspired by the Standard of Ur. Portions of the text are even written in Hieroglyphics, with a translation below. Readers who love hieroglyphics will love deciphering them and applying what they learn to later pages. The afterward gives some historical background for the story and explains the hieroglyphics in more detail. There’s even in nice “Further Reading” section at the end. – Krishni Burns