Reviews for Archaic Egypt

The average rating for Archaic Egypt based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2007-05-16 00:00:00 Oleg Humbucker Ok, early dynastic Egypt is not my favorite period, but it is truly fascinating, especially to see the roots of so many of the cultural institutions that survived nearly unchanged for the next 6,000 years or so.

Review # 2 was written on 2021-01-19 00:00:00 Juerg Ingold This 1961 work applies a veritable microscope to the I and II Dynasties of ancient Egypt, covering the period from approximately 3400 to 2850 B.C. Considering that the great pyramids were built during the IV Dynasty, the religious reforms of Akhenaten occurred during the XVIIIth Dynasty, and the conquest by Alexander around 330 B.C. brought to an end the rule of the XXXth Dynasty, this is going way back and thoroughly justifies the use of the term 'archaic' in the title. Actually, as pointed out in the foreword by M.E.L. Mallowan, the husband of Agatha Christie, little was known about this time until the late nineteenth and twentieth century. Emery actually worked for several decades as an archaeologist, and his book in a testament to the painstaking exactitude of his researches and findings. Somewhat unfortunately, there is far too much focus on the individual trees, and one misses the sense of the forest as a whole. In this, his work is quite similar to that of Adolf Erman's Life in Ancient Egypt, which I characterized more as an encyclopedia than a historical analysis, a judgment which would also hold for this work. For instance, forty-five separate designs of cups, bowls, dishes and pots are described, both with respect to their general shape and as to their particular use, thirty-six different designs on wood, bone and ivory are replicated in one of the well over a hundred figures in the book, each of which is meticulously drawn. There are forty-seven pot marks which were drawn on pots before they were fired, the meanings of which are still unclear. Still, they are all faithfully reproduced in a figure. Finally, bricks of the period varied in size from 23 x 12 x 7 cm. to 26 x 13 x 9 cm. These examples could be added to again and again by the virtually unending flow of minutiae with which this book is filled. Overall, there is an incredible amount of detail on tombs: ancient Egyptians were obsessed with the afterlife and although mummification had not come to encompass the art of embalming by this period, the elaborate designs of tombs, complete with side-rooms for retainers who were supposedly sacrificed to provide attendants for the higher ranked dead. The designs and construction of each tomb is faithfully rendered with precise drawings and elaborate detail. Finally, Emery postulates that the unification of Lower (Northern) and Upper (Southern) Egypt was carried out by a foreign race, who imposed their rule over the native inhabitants, and whose customs and beliefs were eventually copied by the lower orders as the centuries passed. Neither Breasted nor Erman as far as I can recall posited such a theory, but Emery's book is of a later date and possibly understanding had progressed by his time. A truly admirable work of meticulous scholarship, and a fitting representation of the writer's life work.