Reviews for Akrotiri, Thera: An Architecture of Affluence 3,500 Years Old

The average rating for Akrotiri, Thera: An Architecture of Affluence 3,500 Years Old based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-07-24 00:00:00 David Jones Zahi Hawass is an important guy when it comes to Egyptology. He knows it, and he wants us to know it too. He spends a great deal of time in Mountains of the Pharaohs dropping names, asserting his authority when it comes to the possible readings of the artefact record, and sharing anecdotes about his own finds and discoveries. Yet amidst all this self-aggrandizement is some excellent information, and a reassuring vision of how healthy the debate surrounding Egyptian finds continues to be within the community of Egyptologists. Mountains of the Pharaohs is at its worst when Hawass gives in to his imaginings of "what might have happened" to the Pharaohs and those close to them. These fictions -- containing emotion, action, and an off-puttingly omniscient narration -- might very well be rooted in facts about the 4th Dynasty of the Old Kingdom, but they are mostly silly and annoying, offering up a fanciful vision of Hawass' utopian vision of Old Kingdom Egypt. And this utopian vision doesn't dissipate when he leaves the fiction behind. Hawass tends to read the archaeological record with a romantic view of a near perfect ancient world that was mirrored in their near perfect monuments. The book is at its best, however, when Hawass spends some time with the common folk. The closing chapters about the regular Egyptians who were engaged in building the pyramids discusses some exceptional finds, and brings Hawass to a more balanced place in his vision of Ancient Egypt. The common Egyptian is a perspective I've always felt was poorly represented in popular Egyptology, so it was refreshing to see it here. Finally, the reading by Simon Vance (of whom I am a fan, having only ever listened to his audio recordings of the Aubrey-Maturin books) is suitably noble and weighty, impeccably matching the voice to the source material.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-07-03 00:00:00 Michael Sugihara If you like Egyptology, you will love this book. If you don't know what Egyptology means, you probably won't love this book. If you are like me, and you really want to like Egyptology but whenever you read anything about Egypt you feel as though your brain is being extracted through your naval cavity, who knows what you'll think of this book. Mountains of the Pharaohs is interesting in that it endeavors to tell the whole story of how the Great Pyramids were built. It does this with minute detail which is sure to fascinate the scholar, but tends to leave the guys who don't like to get sand in their shoes, like me, a little lost. Hawass does throw a bone to guys like me by filling in the gaps of his historic puzzle with little anecdotes about what people in Ancient Egypt might have said or done in a certain situation. But, not even this occasional narrative departure enticed me because I was trapped in believing that he couldn't know what they actually said or did out of the historical artifacts he has collected. The author even admits to this. Hey, he's trying. I can't fault him for that. So, very well-written. Obviously very well-studied. Just not very well-entertaining. At least for me, the average Djoser who prefers Memphis rub to Memphis statuaries. That's a little joke for all you Egyptologists out there. Take it or leave it.