A lively survey by an eminence in the field.
A history of the relatively short period during which Egyptology “emerged from its antiquarian origins to emerge as a proper scientific discipline.”
More compressed than Jason Thompson’s recent multivolume history on the subject, Wilkinson’s latest spotlights the great French, English, and German scientists and adventurers who managed to crack many of the mysteries of ancient Egypt—notably, Jean-François Champollion’s “decipherment” of hieroglyphics in 1822. His achievement, writes the author, "allowed ancient Egyptian culture to emerge out of the fog of Classical myth and esoteric legend into the spotlight of serious scientific enquiry." After Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt (1798-1801) and the ensuing era of Muhammad Ali's brutal modernization of the country (until 1848), an "orgy of destruction" followed, as treasure seekers and some archaeologists were driven by “a desire to record and preserve Egypt’s ancient patrimony before it was lost forever.” In the 1830s, Prussian archaeologist Karl Richard Lepsius “took Egyptian philology to the next level, enabling, for the first time, the translation of running hieroglyphic texts as opposed to mere names and epithets.” In 1850, French scholar Auguste Mariette discovered the Serapeum monument under the sands of Saqqara, the most celebrated discovery since the Rosetta Stone; in 1858, Mariette was appointed director of the newly formed Egyptian Department of Antiquities. The momentous early 1880s, writes Wilkinson, saw the convergence of European discovery of Egypt and "Egypt’s discovery of itself." Earlier, in 1874, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York “acquired its first Egyptian objects.” When Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon started their excavation of the Valley of the Kings, ancient Egypt had assumed the status of "a complex and vibrant civilization." Refreshingly, Wilkinson dedicates a chapter to two women: Lucie Duff Gordon and Amelia Edwards, whose A Thousand Miles Up the Nile (1877) was published to great acclaim. The author also includes images, maps, and a timeline.
A lively survey by an eminence in the field.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-324-00689-3
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
HISTORY | SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY | ANCIENT | MODERN | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
A horde-pleaser, well-written and full of surprises.
“The Mongols swept across the globe as conquerors,” writes the appreciative pop anthropologist-historian Weatherford (The History of Money, 1997, etc.), “but also as civilization’s unrivaled cultural carriers.”
No business-secrets fluffery here, though Weatherford does credit Genghis Khan and company for seeking “not merely to conquer the world but to impose a global order based on free trade, a single international law, and a universal alphabet with which to write all the languages of the world.” Not that the world was necessarily appreciative: the Mongols were renowned for, well, intemperance in war and peace, even if Weatherford does go rather lightly on the atrocities-and-butchery front. Instead, he accentuates the positive changes the Mongols, led by a visionary Genghis Khan, brought to the vast territories they conquered, if ever so briefly: the use of carpets, noodles, tea, playing cards, lemons, carrots, fabrics, and even a few words, including the cheer hurray. (Oh, yes, and flame throwers, too.) Why, then, has history remembered Genghis and his comrades so ungenerously? Whereas Geoffrey Chaucer considered him “so excellent a lord in all things,” Genghis is a byword for all that is savage and terrible; the word “Mongol” figures, thanks to the pseudoscientific racism of the 19th century, as the root of “mongoloid,” a condition attributed to genetic throwbacks to seed sown by Mongol invaders during their decades of ravaging Europe. (Bad science, that, but Dr. Down’s son himself argued that imbeciles “derived from an earlier form of the Mongol stock and should be considered more ‘pre-human, rather than human.’ ”) Weatherford’s lively analysis restores the Mongols’ reputation, and it takes some wonderful learned detours—into, for instance, the history of the so-called Secret History of the Mongols, which the Nazis raced to translate in the hope that it would help them conquer Russia, as only the Mongols had succeeded in doing.
A horde-pleaser, well-written and full of surprises.Pub Date: March 2, 2004
ISBN: 0-609-61062-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An erudite guide to the biblical world.
Revelations from the Old Testament.
“The Bible has no rivals when it comes to the art of omission, of not saying what everyone would like to know,” observes Calasso (1941-2021), the acclaimed Italian publisher, translator, and explorer of myth, gods, and sacred ritual. In this probing inquiry into biblical mysteries, the author meditates on the complexities and contradictions of key events and figures. He examines the “enigmatic nature” of original sin in Genesis, an anomaly occurring in no other creation myth; God’s mandate of circumcision for all Jewish men; and theomorphism in the form of Adam: a man created in the image of the god who made him. Among the individuals Calasso attends to in an abundantly populated volume are Saul, the first king of Israel; the handsome shepherd David, his successor; David’s son Solomon, whose relatively peaceful reign allowed him “to look at the world and study it”; Moses, steeped in “law and vengeance,” who incited the slaughter of firstborn sons; and powerful women, including the Queen of Sheba (“very beautiful and probably a witch”), Jezebel, and the “prophetess” Miriam, Moses’ sister. Raging throughout is Yahweh, a vengeful God who demands unquestioned obedience to his commandments. “Yahweh was a god who wanted to defeat other gods,” Calasso writes. “I am a jealous God,” Yahweh proclaims, “who punishes the children for the sins of their fathers, as far as the third and fourth generations.” Conflicts seemed endless: During the reigns of Saul and David, “war was constant, war without and war within.” Terse exchanges between David and Yahweh were, above all, “military decisions.” David’s 40-year reign was “harrowing and glorious,” marked by recurring battles with the Philistines. Calasso makes palpable schisms and rivalries, persecutions and retributions, holocausts and sacrifices as tribal groups battled one another to form “a single entity”—the people of Israel.
An erudite guide to the biblical world.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-374-60189-8
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2021
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BOOK REVIEW
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