EGYPTIAN
responsible for the operation of scribal offices, royal sponsored projects and particularly for the interface between royal government and provincial administration; and (2), the treasury sector headed by the primary royal treasurer under whose purview fell both the immediate and wider economic activities of the royal palace. In delineating the structure of royal administration, the author then follows the chain of command through subordinate court offices (Ch.4, pp.67100) including most prominently the ‘high steward’ (imy-ra per wer) and examines how the two sectors of administration tend to relate internally in terms of strings of administrative titles, trajectories of promotion, and in the commemoration of groups of officials in the monumental record. Later chapters examine other areas of administration including the military (Ch.5) and provincial administration (Ch.6). Broader issues of social relations are considered in Chs.7-8 with the final chapter (Ch.9) devoted to women of elite status, their economic and political power and relationships to court officials. A principal value of this book lies in its readable presentation of a rich series of case studies illustrating the careers of court officials. The author examines each example through detailed discussion of the relevant archaeological and inscriptional evidence. The discussion covers not only the better documented cases such as the Twelfth Dynasty viziers Antefoqer and Senwosretankh or Senebsumay (treasurer and later vizier of the Thirteenth Dynasty), but many of the less well-attested examples where little more than a name and title are known. In some cases the current reader wonders whether Grajetzki might not have culled some of these less informative examples from the main text but still included them in the useful lists in the Appendix (pp.169-177). Another aspect which defines the work is the relative anonymity attached to the process of primary research and publication. Certainly the reader can follow up topics through the abundant references and bibliography. However, discoveries, theories and issues of debate are typically treated in the passive voice. Why, for instance, are Habachi’s theories regarding viziers of the Thirteenth Dynasty discussed in the text citing his name, while a few pages before (pp.33-40) the important excavation and publication of the biography of Khnumhotep at Dahshur is only said to have ‘to have recently been re-excavated.’ Highlighting past and current work and scholarship might have added interest and enlivened the book further. One area which a discerning reader might find puzzling is that there is virtually no discussion of the Middle Kingdom royal residence city of Itj-Tawy. It is, perhaps, not surprising that the author has avoided this thorny issue given the uncertainty regarding the city’s exact location and the lack of physical evidence for its size and organization, however, textual data can be brought to bear on some of the key functions of the royal capital and a separate discussion of Itj-Tawy, paired with evidence on palaces and their functions, might have been useful, helping to clarify further what constitutes the ‘court’
ARCHAEOLOGY
in human and physical terms. In embarking on his survey of Middle Kingdom court officials Grajetzki rightly calls into question the often uncritical way in which the term ‘elite’ is applied in Egyptology (p.vii). Periodically he revisits this topic suggesting that the elite of Egypt’s Middle Kingdom were holders of the Egyptian title iry-pat (‘member of the elite’) or other rank designations that linked them directly to the person of the king. For Grajetzki, the elite of the Middle Kingdom represented ‘perhaps as few as fifty per generation’ and essentially comprised the upper echelons of this cadre of royal officials (the same title holders defined in Chs.2-4). Yet, as Grajetzki discusses frequently throughout the volume we have numerous examples of these very same high-status office holders being of modest parentage (e.g: Senebsumay, pp.125-140), sometimes connected with the royal establishment but frequently deriving from provincial backgrounds. The applicability of the term ‘elite’ certainly warrants discussion. It is hard not to conclude, however, that Grajetzki’s figure of fifty individuals is a quite modest quantification of those who dominated the control of wealth and resources during the Eleventh to Thirteenth Dynasties. Certainly the ‘rich and powerful’ of Middle Kingdom society constituted a much more robust segment of the population, and not limited solely to members of the pat proper or the cohort of officials who had direct access to the person of the pharaoh. Occasionally one notes grammatical or spelling errors but these do not detract from the readability and usefulness of the book which is a valuable synthetic work offering many insights on Middle Kingdom society. JOSEF WEGNER William Y Adams, The Road from Frijoles Canyon. Anthropological Adventures on Four Continents. University of New Mexico Press, 2009. (ISBN 978 0 82634 787 9). £37.95. This book takes the reader on a winding journey across the world as anthropologist William Y Adams, shares the story of his life from his early years in the southwestern United States to sojourns in places as far-flung and disparate as Sudanese Nubia, China, Kentucky and Kazakhstan. Inspired by the beauty of the mesas of New Mexico and a visit to Frijoles (pronounced free-HO-lees) Canyon, Adams experienced a personal epiphany as a child and from these beginnings became a leading anthropologist and ultimately the greatly respected doyen of Nubian archaeology. His upbringing is vividly described in the early chapters. He moved frequently, residing in a variety of places including rural California, a Navajo reservation in Arizona, and Manzanar, a Japanese relocation centre in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. His mother was a young widow and he was largely raised by his extended family. These experiences enabled him to learn independence and self-reliance; traits that have served him well throughout his lengthy career. He was accepted at Stanford University at 16, but joined the US Navy shortly afterwards. As a young veteran, he made good use of the American GI Bill studying anthropology at Berkeley and participating 37
in his first excavations. Though accepted into a graduate programme, his GI Bill funding ran out and he ended up where he began, on a Navajo reserve in Arizona, eventually becoming a trader there. He completed his studies at the University of Arizona and there he met the love of his life, Nettie, with whom he formed a life-long partnership and raised two children. His PhD thesis, written about his experiences at the trading post, entitled Shonto: A Study of the Role of the Trader in a Modern Navaho Community (1963) remains wonderfully evocative. Adams then accepted a contract to conduct salvage archaeology along the San Juan and Colorado rivers in connection with the construction of the Glen Canyon Dam. This experience provided the foundation for his participation in the UNESCO High Dam Salvage Campaign, which aimed to rescue endangered ancient monuments in Egypt and Sudan. He ended up spending seven years in Nubia, during which time he excavated and surveyed threatened sites along the west bank of the Nile in Sudan, as well as the settlements of Meinarti and Kulubnarti. He judged a site to be important based on the new information it could yield, rather than the number of artefacts, and, as an anthropologist, his interest was always focused on the people who produced the artefacts, not the artefacts themselves. Following the UNESCO campaign, Adams became first a team member, and later Director, of the EES excavation at Qasr Ibrim, publishing his fieldwork as EES Excavation Memoirs. During his university career, Adams taught 34 different courses at the University of Kentucky, as well as at several other institutions in venues as far afield as China and Kazakhstan. His range of academic publications is diverse and includes Nubian archaeology, ceramics and churches; archaeology and ethnology in the American southwest; anthropological and archaeological theory and practice; and the anthropology of religion. He will probably be best known to EA readers as the author of the seminal Nubia, Corridor to Africa (1977). Translated into Arabic, it has enabled Nubians to gain access to their own ancient history. Adams has made a tremendous contribution to the development and dissemination of archaeology and anthropology, particularly in Nubian studies, but he is, sadly, better known in Europe, Africa and Asia, than in his home country, the United States. These memoirs are not limited to the author’s life story. He relates lessons learned and mistakes made, along with interpretations and observations, giving this autobiography an unusual depth, intellectual honesty, and refreshing candour, while always remaining extremely engaging and readable. The author’s ability as a raconteur sets this memoir apart from others. Bill Adams continues to inspire. At the 12th International Conference for Nubian Studies, held recently at the British Museum (1-6 August 2010), the President of the Nubian Society, Vincent Rondot, congratulated him on his 83rd birthday saying that he had brought baraka (Arabic: blessing) to the conference. Long may this continue. JULIE R ANDERSON