ANCIENT EGYPT by David P. Silverman, editor. Duncan Baird Publishers, London, 1997
    INTRODUCTION (p6-7)

      To modern people "Ancient Egypt" presents a puzzle. Ancient Egypt has thousands of familiar visual cues that make it spring to life with the coherent character unequalled by any other civilization of antiquity. Yet the full depth and breadth of its culture still remain to be discovered.

      For almost two millennia before the publication of Champollion's decipherment of heiroglyphs in 1822, those fascinated by the creations of this long-dead culture could interpret them only by guesswork and hypothesis. They could recognize the images that comprised the hieroglyphs, but could not read them. They could marvel at the engineering skills involved in building a giant pyramid, but were ignorant of the multipole levels of significance that such a structure possessed.

      They could explore temple and tomb architecture, but could only guess about its relevance to the religion, life and death of those ancient people. They could gaze upon statues of hybrid creatures, but remained unaware of their exact role. Mummies, unearthed by the thousand, were a constant source of interest, but their true significance was overshadowed by the strange belief that powdered mummy, if consumed by the ill, had curative powers. Even after more reliable information was available, there were those who turned a blind eye to the facts, instead believing of legend, rumors, and half-truth.

      Shortly after the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, ancient Egyptian motifs became a source of embellishment in the architecture and decorative arts of Europe and to a lesser extent the United States. In the 19th century, many new banks, hotels, libraries, and other public and commercial buildings were built in the "Egyptian" style, with papyrus and lotus column ornamentation. After the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922, a new wave of "Egyptomania" broke in both Europe and the United States.

      After another 50 years, the phenomenon of "Egyptomania" started again with the great traveling exhibition of Tutankhamun's treasures. The high visibility of ancient Egypt to the popular imagination shoudl not be allowed to eclipse the perhaps less spectacular but more factual and more important work undertaken by scholars.

      The past two centuries have seen the gradual development of reputable scientific investigation in the field. When Champollion's work became available, philologists began to provide information about what the inscriptions really said. Eventually antropologists, art historians, cultural historians, religious historians and other academicians took part in a concerted investigative effort to piece together the facts of life of the Ancient Egyptians.

      Now Egyptologists are asking about all levels of Ancient Egyptian society, not just the royal and elite ruling classes.

    PART 1--- THE EGYPTIAN WORLD (p8-103)

      1) The gift of the Nile (p10-19)

      2) Three kingdoms and 34 dynasties (p20-39)

      3) Egypt and the world beyond (p40-57)

      4) The wealth of the land (p58-67)

      5) The settled world (p68-79)

      6) Women in Egypt (p80-89)

      7) The boundaries of knowledge (p90-103)

    PART 2 --- BELIEF AND RITUAL (p104-165)

      8) The Lord of the two lands (p106-113)

      9) The celestial realm (p114-131)

      10) The cult of the dead (p132-147)

      11) The life of ritual (p148-165)

    PART 3 --- ART, ARCHITECTURE, AND LANGUAGE (p166-241)

      12) The pyramids (p168-191)

      13) Tombs and temples (p192-211)

      14) Egyptian art (p212-230)

      15) Signs, symbols, and language (p230-241)

    GLOSSARY (p242)

    BIBLIOGRAPHY (p243-245)

    INDEX (p246-255)

    PICTURE CREDITS (p256)

    ABOUT THE GENERAL EDITOR
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