Am Anfang war Agypten: Die Geschichte der pharaonischer Hochkultur von der Fruhzeit bis zum Ende des Neuen Reiches, ca. 4000-1070 v. Chr.

• Author: Quack, Joachim Friedrich
• Position: Book review

Am Anfang war Agypten: Die Geschichte der pharaonischer Hochkultur von der Fruhzeit bis zum Ende des Neuen Reiches, ca. 4000-1070 v. Chr. By MICHAEL HOVELER-MULLER. Kulturgeschichte der Antiken Welt, vol. 101. Mainz: VERLAG PHILIPP VON ZABERN, 2005. Pp. 303, illus. [euro]39.90.

In contrast to other treatments of ancient Egyptian history, this book is limited to the time span from the Predynastic Period to the end of the New Kingdom. The author gives specific reasons for his limitations (p. 272). According to him, after the end of the New Kingdom, Egypt's history was no longer glorious; it was a toy in the hands of countries that it previously had ruled. Hoveler-Muller wanted to limit himself to the three great periods he considers the main part of Egyptian history. Such an attitude seems surprising to the reviewer. First, its factual basis can be doubted. The Saitic dynasty certainly had its grandeur, and even the Thirtieth Dynasty saw some bold campaigns into Asia. The Ptolemaic empire, even though it had a foreign upper class, was territorially based in Egypt, and was certainly a glorious period. If Egypt was a plaything in the hand of any country, it was so under Assyria and Persia, countries it had not ruled previously. Besides, it seems an unduly patronizing and outdated attitude to be interested only in the glorious moments of a civilization under study. Historians have to keep their minds open for what did happen, not for what they wish had been. Furthermore, we should not forget that in the last two decades it has been sources from the Late Period that have done most to enrich and enlarge our image of ancient Egyptian culture.

For those periods which he describes, the author is normally rather brief and dry, reducing his description to a bare skeleton of names and events. Only occasionally is he carried away by his own interest in a subject; in these rare moments, he also proposes some new interpretations. Most prominently, his treatment of the Narmeher palette (pp. 31-33) amounts almost to an article of its own. In other cases, he can be not only brief but also unbalanced. Thus, the Upper Egyptian neolithic and chalcolithic cultures are treated fairly extensively, but of the Lower Egyptian ones, Merimde and El-Omari--as well as the early Fayum cultures--are not mentioned at all, and the Maadi-Buto culture only en passant. Even for the Old Kingdom, which seems to be the main focus of the author, there are strange omissions in the...