Egypt, Israel, and the Ancient Mediterranean World: Studies in Honor of Donald B. Redford.

• Author: Spalinger, Anthony
• Position: Book review

Egypt, Israel, and the Ancient Mediterranean World: Studies in Honor of Donald B. Redford. Edited by GARY N. KNOPPERS and ANTOINE HIRSCH. Probleme der Agyptologie, vol. 20. Leiden: BRILL, 2004. Pp. viii + 524, plates. $222.

As all readers know, it is extremely difficult to provide a useful review of any Festschrift. Reasons for this can be adumbrated, but two points are salient. The first is the most simple. Considering the costs of publication and the research interests of scholars, it is self-evident that such works will be consulted for specific chapters rather than purchased for one's working library. Moreover, by virtue of the heterogeneous nature of the material it is rarely the case that these works satisfy the dedicated scholar. Often, the outputs are of an uneven quality (and length) and the best that an impartial observer can do is list each chapter by title and author with a precis of the subject addressed.

Egyptology, as is the case with other fields of intellectual endeavor, appears to have gotten itself caught in a dilemma: namely, the continual production of Festschriften. Rather than succumb to the inevitable and realize that our science has outgrown its heroic stage, this scholarly field has remained on a plateau in which, year after year, yet another huge book is dedicated to a prominent scholar. The conception of devoting one issue of a journal to a well-known researcher seems to have been abandoned. As a result, we are now faced with many such books, all of which are difficult to reference owing to the complexity of the title of the work, the number of editors, and various bibliographical details, such as the pertinent chapter and author. Although some scholars have expressly forbidden any collection of essays dedicated to them, by and large it is fair to state that these injunctions are rare indeed.

I do not mean to belittle the efforts that scholars and editors have put into such works. Nonetheless, I find myself often first bemused and then amused over the release of large and larger Festschriften at a time when the natural sciences and mathematics avoid these costly and time-consuming tasks. If this criticism is considered to be overly harsh, let me then compare the practice of late medieval Europe, where any city aiming at grandeur spent its resources producing the continent's tallest spire for its cathedral. (Compare the comments of Norbert Elias, Reflections on a Life, tr. Edmund Jephcott [Cambridge, Mass., 1994]...