Product Description

The ancient Egyptians are an enduring source of fascination - mummies and pyramids, curses and rituals have captured the imagination of generations. We all have a mental picture of ancient Egypt, but is it the right one? How much do we really know about this great civilization? In this absorbing introduction, Ian Shaw describes how our current ideas about Egypt are based not only on the thrilling discoveries made by early Egyptologists but also on fascinating new kinds of evidence produced by modern scientific and linguistic analyses. He also explores the changing influences on our responses to these finds, through such media as literature, cinema and contemporary art. Each chapter deals with a different aspect of ancient Egypt, from despotic pharaohs to dismembered bodies, and from hieroglyphs to animal-headed gods.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #104944 in Books
• Published on: 2004-07-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

About the Author
Ian Shaw studied Archaeology and Egyptology at Cambridge University from 1979 to 1983. He obtained his PhD (a study of the artefacts at el-Amarna) from Wolfson College, Cambridge University in 1987. From 1986 to 1990 he edited the ancient Egyptian section of the Macmillan Dictionary of Art. From 1990 to 1994, he undertook research into Egyptian quarrying and mining sites as a British Academy Research Fellow at New Hall, Cambridge. From 1995 to 2000 he was a Lecturer in
Egyptian Archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. He is currently Lecturer in Classics and Oriental Studies at the University of Liverpool.

Customer Reviews

Brilliant introduction
I knew absolutely nothing about ancient Egypt and cared less. I was still fascinated by this book and inspired to follow it up.

It starts with the Narmer Palette, an artefact in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and uses the decoration on both sides, pictures and hieroglyphs, to explain some of the things we think we know about ancient Egypt and how we think we know them. It's thought the elegantly outlined depression between the serpopards was used for crushing pigment for eyeshadow....serpopards? Leopards with the heads and neck of snakes.

The book goes on to look specifically at how we establish the narrative history of ancient history (or rather, perhaps, speculate about it rather than establish it), the roles of kings, and the issues of identity (the significance of race and gender in particular) and of religion (mummification, the pyramids and so on). Ancient Egypt really was ancient - the Pharaonic period started 5000 years ago and the timeline in the book goes further back than that - and covered a very long period, lasting into the Roman era AD. It's not surprising perhaps that it's very hard to "know" much, and of course, things will have changed quite a lot in the thousands of years covered by the Egyptian era.

In particular the book exposes some of the conflicts between archeologists, who look at what's left of the buildings and artifacts, and those who read and interpret the writing and hieroglyphs found on them. It had never occurred to me that there might be a division like that.

There is an outline of the rise of Egyptology in the nineteenth century, the mistakes made by early investigators which may have destroyed important evidence (and why they made the mistakes), and, finally some discussion of the impact of ancient Egypt on the twentieth century. This short section gives equal space to the Anthony and Cleopatras of Burton and Taylor on the one hand and of Kenneth Williams and Amanda Barrie on the other - this book has its feet on the ground.

There are good illustrations to support the text (full-page photos of both sides of the Narmer Palette, for example, so you see exactly what the author is writing about), a glossary and several pages of further reading and useful websites.

I was really surprised at being drawn in so thoroughly. Fascinating introduction.

A good, learned and up to date introduction
A very succinct exploration of all aspects of ancient Egypt (and the morass of un-scientific invention around the subject). Stimulating and bang up to date it is also (almost incidentally) a good contemplation of the problems of understanding and interpreting history. Made me realise just how little I knew about Egypt.

Misleading title, but strangely successful nonetheless
A very short introduction to Egyptology would be more accurate.

Whilst I read this book straight through, and found it full of little nuggets of information which were fascinating, there's actually very little about Ancient Egypt in the scarce number of pages.

Want to know about the history, culture, or beliefs of the Ancient Egyptians? Look somewhere else. Want to know the names of Egyptologists and their various discoveries and errors? You've come to the right place. This is far more a book about the way Egypt has been studied, and a review of the current controversies and how we've got there.

The author has a good old moan about how few geologists work in Egypt and has a chapter on how we'd try and work out how old a minor temple with no distinguishing features is (conclusion - it's pretty hard, unless we could get some geologists in and there's not enough and no-one cares about this minor temple anyway).

I can only really recommend this book to people who have read a few introductory books on Egypt but want to know how much has been made up and what we really know for sure. In fact, the perfect audience of this book would be archaeology students (or geologists) who want to know whether Egyptology is something they want to get into.

For everyone else - well, yeah, it's kind of alright. Ish. I know a lot more about a very old palette (REALLY OLD) and about the people who have been looking at it over the last 200 years. I've learnt very little about Egypt and its culture, but I know to treat facile histories with a bit more scepticism now.