EGYPTIAN
flected the piety and fear of Egyptians in their struggle to protect themselves from the everpresent supernormal world of gods and demons. By its ver y nature, Roman Egyptomania can occur only outside Egypt, whereas most Roman Egyptians, native or of Greek descent, permanent inhabitants, not seekers after fashion, came to terms with their desperate existence with the aid of protective devices made by Egyptian artisans. Owing to the availability of material, much of it in Italy, there is only one object of the hundred or so catalogued that can be regarded as an example of Roman Egyptomania: no.103, the marble statue of Bes from Rome. Dr Ashton suggests that importation by Egypt of Egyptomaniacal products of Italy had great influence on the appearance of objects made in Egypt. Isis statues of Roman date in their canonical form seem to be placed into this category, but such figures are widespread over the eastern Mediterranean, from Cyrene, Cyprus, Delos, Athens and elsewhere, and need not be based on Italian examples. I doubt whether it is provable that any of the canonical statues of Isis found in Egypt, including those from Ras el-Soda (in marble), Canopus (in basalt) and Luxor (in limestone), is an Italian product. The author has many interesting ideas which enliven this publication, but I find it difficult to agree with her that the canonical Isis came about in Italy during Roman times by stealing the costume of Ptolemaic queens: the knotted shawl and the ‘Isis’ locks are found on many Ptolemaic figures and vases, just as the Bes (no. 59) is as likely to be wearing Macedonian armour as Roman. Some minor quibbles: p. 9: surely Hadrian’s rebuild (if it was indeed he and not an Antonine or a Severan emperor) of the Sarapieion at Alexandria, even in parts, was not Egyptianising? (Judith McKenzie’s 2003 and 2004 publications on this building have resolved this); p. 11: despite some possible Greek input the Ammoneion at Siwa was a Twenty-Sixth Dynasty building in Egyptian style, not ‘purely Roman in form’; p. 11: the Gates of the Sun and Moon were at each end of Canopic Street, the main east-west thoroughfare of Alexandria, not incorporated in the Hippodrome; pp. 132-9: no. 84, with inept figures carved, I would judge, on an already existing pot, and nonsense inscriptions in relief (the last a bad sign) - I believe this object must be false; pp. 176-9: neither ‘RomanoEgyptian nor Egyptianising’, but rather a Roman barbarian, made in a coloured stone as so often they were: could the headdress be a Phrygian cap variant? This publication for all its merits shows signs of hasty writing and lack of editing, no doubt due to short deadlines, but unfortunate for all that. DONALD BAILEY Aidan Dodson and Dyan Hilton, The Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt. Thames & Hudson, 2004. (ISBN 0 500 05128 3). Price: £29.95. Genealogy mattered in ancient Egypt, and royal genealogy mattered most, then and now. Since the inception of Egyptology, scholars have attempted to piece together the pedigrees of the royal dynasties based on surviving evidence, and, unfortunately, a lot of
ARCHAEOLOGY
Berenice who married a High Priest of Ptah but is known only from one disputed reading. Philip III (the half-brother of Alexander) was not murdered by Cassander (as stated on p.258), who was his ally, but by Alexander’s notorious mother Olympias, whom Cassander killed in revenge (as stated correctly on p.262). The volume concludes with a detailed index and it is splendidly illustrated throughout. This will remain a standard reference work on Egyptian royalty for the near future. However, dare one hope that new discoveries will demand a new edition in the not too distant future? MORRIS BIERBRIER
heady speculation. Much new information has been uncovered in recent excavations and so this book is a timely reconsideration of the current state of our knowledge. Of course, the paternal ancestry of each pharaoh was technically clear to all Egyptians since he was the son of the supreme deity, be it Re or Amun. The contradictory fact that he also had a human father did not at all bother the Egyptians or indeed the king, who was happy to honour both his fathers. The volume begins with a series of introductory essays on the king, the state of Egypt, and the royal relations, providing a useful background for the general reader. The authors quite rightly dismiss the discredited theory that the succession depended on the king marrying his sister. Indeed, they show that relatively few monarchs married their sisters and fewer children of such marriages actually succeeded. The mechanics of succession still remain obscure and were perhaps so at the time. The authors then list the titles used by members of the royal family with their (the authors’) abbreviations. It is unfortunate that the title Mistress of Upper and Lower Egypt is abbreviated as MULE, a sterile animal. There follows an exposition, section by section, of the royal families. Each begins with a list of the rulers and then a discussion of the family relationships, with a pedigree and finally brief biographical entries for each prince and royal lady, but not the kings. The speculation is usually confined to the discussion, and the entries themselves reflect the evidence as available. Sometimes, the line between speculation and fact is eroded; for example, the lady Kiya, a wife of Akhenaten, is shown on the pedigree as a daughter of Tushratta, King of Mitanni, when the name there should be that of Tadukhipa, whose identification with Kiya is pure speculation. Inevitably in such a complex compilation, there are statements of relationship which might be questioned, but the information on the whole is judicious, clear and concise. The weakest part is the section on the Macedonian and Ptolemaic families, where errors creep in, such as the alleged son Caranus of Philip of Macedon, dismissed by classicists as fiction, and the alleged Ptolemaic princess
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Donald B Redford, From Slave to Pharaoh.The Black Experience of Ancient Egypt. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. (ISBN 0 8018 7814 4). Price: £32. Professor Redford’s volume, which focuses on the Egyptian TwentyFifth Dynasty, is a welcome addition to the growing number of publications dealing with one of the less fashionable periods of Egyptian history. Scholars, students and other enthusiasts will welcome any publication such as this, which is well written and will, hopefully, be fairly widely distributed, especially with its eye-catching (and deliberately provocative?) title. The first seven chapters (of 15) are devoted to setting the scene by tracing the history of the relationship between the cultures of Egypt and Nubia up to the point of the invasion of the Two Lands by King Piye, shortly before the end of the eighth century BC. Professor Redford’s breezy and very readable account is written from an Egyptologist’s perspective and is based on references to numerous, mostly Egyptian, textual sources. The referencing throughout the book is thorough, which this reviewer (a keen reader of foot- and end-notes) found interrupted the flow of the prose at times, but which nonetheless is a sign of the author’s command of the primary sources. Professor Redford’s summary of the reasons behind the ‘administrative decline of the Third Intermediate Period’, which actually appears some way into his narrative of the history of the dynasty, is most pithy and enlightening. Here he explains the economic, political and environmental factors which brought about the changes in the way the country was run, in turn impacting on religious beliefs, and specifically the mythology of kingship. His notes on the negative effects of the monumental reign of Ramesses II are particularly interesting. The book also provides much detail as to the various Delta principalities and their rulers who, with central authority weakened (and perhaps nonexistent in any real sense), played an increasingly significant role during the Third Intermediate Period. The author does not however deal directly with the possibility that several kings traditionally assigned to the Tanite Twenty-Third Dynasty, actually belonged to an independent line of Theban rulers, preferring to adhere to Kitchen’s reconciliation of the archaeological evidence and Manetho’s list of kings. He concedes the likelihood that Osorkon III resided in Thebes, but avoids another of the most fiercely debated issues among those studying the period – whether or not that king was one and the same as the High