2018-03-14
I’m going to have to be harsh with this book for 3 key reasons:
1. It’s mainly just political history – so it’s basically a narrative about which Pharaoh sat on the throne, who he married, and who his kids were. This tells us nothing about Egypt, the country, the life of its people, or its culture – which is what the book title suggests it will be.
For those of you crying foul over this objection, I can only suggest that naming Donald Trump as an American president, stating he was married to Melania and that he lived in the Whitehouse, tells us nothing about the life and tribulations in Trump America. Conversely, naming Elizabeth Windsor as a queen of England, naming her husband and children, does nothing to describe life in Britain during her extensive rule.
2. There are no images – even though a good third of this book appears to be detailed descriptions of the tombs the pharaohs built for themselves, plus the various temples, palaces, and other grand structures they constructed.
Actually, I’m wrong – at the end of the ebook there were a few general images – but for a book that contains so many detailed descriptions of buildings it seemed pretty ridiculous that no diagrams, drawings, photos, or other images, ordinarily accompanied the text.
3. The book is filled with quotes, obviously from various sources – but no footnotes are given! So you’ve no idea what the actual references are or from. Yet at the end of the ebook all the references are provided for by chapter, linking back to the text.
In other words, the publisher got the references back to front, which made them impossible to use in the ebook – assuming you actually knew where they were.
Overall this is a dull and dry book that is punctuated by moments of illumination. While the main narrative is nothing more than a glorified list of kings and descriptions of their buildings, there are a few moments when ordinary people and their culture do make it into the text.
It was also good to see the pre-historic period covered, plus it was interesting to see some of the political undercurrents building up – not least the increasing power and rivalry of Amen that Akhenaten sought to curtail.
Really, though, this whole book could and should have been a whole lot better. It reads like a graduate essay with anything of use stripped out, though the publisher is as much to blame as anyone for some of this.
Rating: 2/5