 • Buy this item from our featured Merchant - Featured Price: $29.99
 |
Product Reviews:
The Ancient Egyptian State: The Origins of Egyptian Culture (c. 8000-2000 BC) (Case Studies in Early Societies) |
Rating: 5 (out of 5)
Summary: Excellent Book - endorse To All
Comments: I REALLY enjoyed this book and learned a lot from it. This book is well-written, and I liked the alalmost all conversational tone taken by the author. The text supplies a lot of relevant and recent hard data about the Egyptian past, however these sections of the text are nicely broken up with "boxes," which focus on small interesting topics (including the snakes of Egypt, the experience of living in Egyptian rural communities, Herodotus, etc.). Although the introduction states the book is intended for students in courses such as undergrad or grad comparative civilizations, it is accessible to the general reader. Throughout the book, Wenke reviews the many attempts to develop a general theory of history and he supplies many examples of how such attempts to formulate such a theory have failed. He also describes contemporary attempts to recast archaeology into a science or some other form of general understanding.
The strength of the book is that it integrates a highly detailed review of Egypt's archaeological record during a critical period of cultural change, and yet at the same time it integrates this information with current anthropological theory. Wenke also Comes with beautifully written essays that help1appreciate the beauty of Egypt's monuments, writing system, and the ancient Egyptians' philosophy, i.e. how they made sense of their world. The sections on how archaeological research is done in the field are instructive and rarely seen in almost all introductory books on ancient Egypt.
|
Rating: 3 (out of 5)
Summary: Ok introduction to dynastic Egypt
Comments: I am not exactly clear on what the purpose of this book is. What exactly is its intended audience, as a book on pre-dynastic and Old Kingdom Egypt it is pretty thin, on state formation it is a complete bust and it discusses lots of theory however in a superficial and unenlightening way. If1is interested in Ancient Egyptian society there are far better books, if1is looking for a book on the origin of state level societies it offers amazingly little, and if1is familiar with Egyptology and looking for an intro to modern archaeological theory, this is a bad place to start. My only guess is that it might make for a great book for an intro archaeology course, because unlike almost all such books in covers a subject almost all students are interested in.
My background is in Archaeology of the Americas and I read this because I was hoping to learn something about State formation in Egypt, however having read a couple of general books on the topic, and the brilliant, if somewhat dated Egypt Before the Pharaohs: The Prehistoric Foundation of Egyptian Civilization, alalmost all none of the information was new to me except for details of the author's work in the Faiyum.
The best parts of the book are the authors little digressions about life as an Egyptologist, however this is supposedly a scholarly book and not a journalistic1and they are not particularly informative, though admittedly they are written with considerable charm. The whole tone is conversational and Wenke seems to be an engaging teacher, however it is pretty thin gruel. Several times I thought, so this is the Bruce Trigger lite version of early Egyptian history, since Wenke spends a lot of time just repeating things from Trigger.
The title would suggest it would focus on the formation of the dynastic state, and its time frame extends into the Pyramid building Old Kingdom, however except in the last couple of pages it has little to say on this. The subtitle speaks of the origin of Egyptian culture, and while this is discussed at some length, little in the way of specifics are discussed. Far less in fact than many a scholarly general history of Ancient Egypt would. It is part of a series on the archaeology of ancient societies, however almost all of the archaeology is described in such broad strokes that it is not coherent. A lot of time is spent discussing theory as well however with no depth and in a glancing way. |
