EGYPTIAN
John Romer, A History of Ancient Egypt: from the first farmers to the Great Pyramid. Allen Lane, 2012 (ISBN 978 1 846 14377 9). Price: £25.00. John Romer is best known for his work in the Valley of the Kings in the late 1970s and from his various popular works on this and other ancient topics - including his provocative Rape of Tutankhamun (1993), in which he roundly criticised various approaches taken to fieldwork in Egypt. In his Preface to this book - intended to be the first of two volumes covering the five millennia of Egyptian Predynastic and Dynastic history - as well as in lectures given to promote it, the author implies a similarly iconoclastic approach to the writing of Egyptian history as presently practised. In doing so, he holds up Alan Gardiner’s Egypt of the Pharaohs as the kind of prevalent ‘old fashioned’ work he is reacting against - yet this was published more than 60 years ago, when its author was over 80, and, although still usable with care, no professional Egyptologist would now endorse it as an example of contemporary historiography. One thing Romer rails against is Gardiner’s failure to go back beyond the beginning of the Early Dynastic Period - but one needs to note not only that Gardiner was explicitly writing a history based on written sources but also that there is a very real issue about whether one can actually write ‘history’ (as defined by the Pocket Oxford Dictionary as a ‘continuous methodological record of important or public events’) prior to the advent of writing. We can certainly provide an account of successive material cultures within an outline chronology, and perhaps infer some events from material remains, but this reviewer remains uncomfortable in calling this ‘history’. Indeed, there are significant issues around the validity of calling large chunks of what we think we know about ancient Egyptian events ‘history’ - but that is for another occasion! Romer’s book begins during the fifth millennium, with the Fayum Neolithic cultures and a more general discussion of climatic and ecological matters, including the annual Nile inundation. In this and later chapters, the author aims to ‘personalise’ his descriptions of the material culture, particularly as regards aesthetic issues - unsurprisingly, given his own background as an artist. He then moves successively through the general issues of the ‘Neolithic revolution’ to the Merimda/Omari, Badarian, Naqada and Maadi-Buto cultures, interposed with discussions of various specific topics. Here and there the book’s ‘radical’ agenda is underlined by such statements as ‘[c]onventional histories of Naqadan culture are by definition bogus’. However, from the remarks that follow, it is clear that the author is not referring to modern work on the period but that from decades ago, recognised by all professionals as obsolescent at best, and thus, by definition, no longer ‘conventional’: Romer does himself no favours by setting up such Aunt Sallies that implicitly denigrate modern mainstream
ARCHAEOLOGY
Bookshelf
researchers as blind followers of ‘tradition’. Such researchers’ work is then highlighted by an account of the ongoing research at Hierakonpolis, including the implications of the discovery of the burials of victims of mace-blows. We then move into the interface between the Predynastic and Early Dynastic Periods. In this, and elsewhere, key discoveries are introduced before their discussion, although this is done in a rather uneven way with, for reasons that are not made clear, far more detail given on the excavation and excavators in certain cases but not in others. However, the key issues surrounding this era are covered, including its foreign links, leading on into the First Dynasty proper. Here, almost as much space seems devoted to describing nineteenth century excavations as to the interpretation of their, and later, finds, before moving on to an excursus on Manetho. We then have a chapter nominally on the Second Dynasty, although much of this is taken up by an account of the early history of Aswan, without any real engagement with what might actually have happened during that obscure dynasty. On the other hand, a kind of ‘before and after’ is provided by a chapter contrasting the Saqqara tombs of Merka (First Dynasty) and Hesyre (Third Dynasty). This is indeed a worthwhile comparison (though hindered by the lack of any reference to the intervening Second Dynasty tombs) given the evolution of private tombs between the reigns of Qaa and Djoser, but the author never seems to get a full grip on the architectural issues involved, instead devoting considerable space to a description of Mariette’s career and the mode of Quibell’s rediscovery of Hesyre’s tomb - both interesting topics, but surely only footnotes to the writing of history. A similar monument-centric approach is taken to the reign of Djoser, with extensive descriptions of the Step Pyramid complex - but nothing on how it might relate to the
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preceding royal tombs of the Early Dynastic Period or how Djoser himself linked back into the Second Dynasty. In view of this interest in monumental architecture, it is surprising that Romer then jumps from brief discussions of Sekhemkhet and Khaba to Seneferu with no mention of one of the most remarkable, but least known, Old Kingdom pyramids: the Brick Pyramid at Abu Rowash - a monument intended to be as big as the Second Pyramid at Giza. Although lacking any inscribed evidence for its builder, its internal design makes it impossible to place it other than at the end of the Third Dynasty, most probably as the tomb of Huni (in spite of Romer’s claims, there is no evidence to associate Huni with anything at Dahshur). The account of Seneferu’s reign is dominated by descriptions of tombs of the time, both of courtiers and of the king himself, with a useful account of the trials and tribulations that led to Seneferu possessing no fewer than three fullsize pyramids. It is shortly afterwards, with the accession of Khufu - whose pyramid was the subject of Romer’s previous book - that the narrative comes to a close, with an account of the excavation of the tomb of Hetepheres. The main body of the book is followed by a chronological table, with a useful note on the realities of Egyptian chronology, and a bibliography. This, as the author expressly states, is intended as a short general reading guide, rather than a full citation of sources. Nevertheless, this is usefully arranged by chapter, with a short note as to the utility of the source in question, making it a useful tool for the uninitiated. The book is illustrated largely with line drawings - of varying quality and provenance - plus a number of monochrome and colour plates; unfortunately, some of the latter are biliously off-true. Notwithstanding the aforementioned comments, Romer’s book provides a useful overview of what is known of Egypt in the fifth through to the mid-third millennia, informally told, with some nice turns of phrase - the reviewer wishes he could get away with calling a chapter on cylinder-seals ‘Rolling Along’. Accordingly, it is a pity that it should be burdened with its claims of particular novelty and pot-shots at alleged archaic ‘conventionalism’ or ‘tradition’ that has not existed in professional Egyptology for a long time. It is, therefore, to be hoped that the promised second volume will play it straight and rely on its own inherent qualities rather than ‘dissing the [alleged] opposition’! AIDAN DODSON
Andrew Robinson, Cracking The Egyptian Code. The Revolutionary Life of Jean-François Champollion. Thames & Hudson, 2012. (ISBN 978 0 5000 5171 9). Price: £19.95. A full-length biography of Champollion as one of the pioneers in the decipherment of hieroglyphs has been sorely lacking in English. Mention of Champollion and decipherment in English publications is restricted in its focus and does not flesh out the man. This