A Companion to Ancient Egypt.

• Author: Eaton, Katherine
• Position: Book review

A Companion to Ancient Egypt. Edited by ALAN B. LLOYD. Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World. Pp. 1 + 1276, illus. Maiden, Mass.: WILEY BLACKWELL, 2014. S59.95 (paper).

Blackwell Companions has an excellent reputation as a series, and this volume lives up to it. It is divided into seven parts: "The Land of Egypt" (chapter 1), "Historical Narratives" (chapters 2-10), "State and Economic Structures" (chapters 11-24), "The Social Order" (chapters 25-28), "Language and Literature" (chapters 29-34), "The Visual Arts" (chapters 35-45), and "The Reception of Egyptian Culture" (chapters 46-49), with separate bibliographies for parts I-IV and parts V-VII.

All of the material presented is within the mainstream of current Egyptological thought. The entries do vary considerably in their target audiences. Some are highly readable narratives, ideal for a general audience and beginning undergraduates, such as Spalingers "Military Institutions and Warfare: Pharaonic" and Dodsons "Mortuary Architecture and Decorative Systems." On the other end of the spectrum, probably to be reserved for upper level undergraduates at most colleges and universities, are Allens description of ancient Egyptian language in "Languages, Scripts, and Literacy" and Sorouzians detailed analysis of style in "Old Kingdom Sculpture." Many contributors rise above the basics and deal with current debates without getting too complicated for a volume for the general public, like Davoli's summary of theories about reconstructing Greco-Roman settlement patterns (p. 354) and Enmarch's brief and elegant summary of debates about dating and what literature is (esp. p. 666).

A particularly effective approach to the difficulties of addressing a general audience with scholarly rigor is to draw a general outline of the topic at hand and use a case study to introduce select complexities, for example Frankfurter's discussion of terracotta figurines in "Religion in Society: GraecoRoman" and Bednarski's discussion of the acquisition decisions at Cambridges Fitzwilliam Museum in "The Reception of Egypt in Europe." This approach also allows authors to delve into those aspects of the topic about which they are most passionate. These case studies often have greater impact than general summaries and are likely to draw the student in, despite their more difficult content. The chapters on "Social Structure and Daily Life" by Frood (Pharaonic) and Cruz-Uribe (Graeco-Roman) both stand out in uniting...