A History of Ancient Egypt Volume 2: From the Great Pyramid to the Fall of the Middle Kingdom

by John Romer

Overview

"Another solid work of history from an author and historian who truly grasps the mysteries of ancient Egypt." - Kirkus Reviews

Drawing on a lifetime of research, John Romer chronicles the history of Ancient Egypt from the building of the Great Pyramid through the rise and fall of the Middle Kingdom: a peak of Pharaonic culture and the period when writing first flourished. Through extensive research over many decades of work, reveals how the grand narratives of 19th and 20th century Egyptologists have misled us by portraying a culture of cruel monarchs and chronic war. Instead, based in part on discoveries of the past two decades, this extraordinary account shows what we can really learn from the remaining architecture, objects, and writing: a history based on physical reality.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250833495
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/07/2017
Series:	A History of Ancient Egypt
Pages:	672
Sales rank:	507,924
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.49(d)

About the Author

JOHN ROMER has worked in Egypt since 1966 on archaeological digs in many key sites, including the Valley of the King and Karnak. He led the Brooklyn Museum expedition to excavate the tomb of Ramasses XI. He wrote and presented a number of television series, including The Seven Wonders of the World, Romer's Egypt, Ancient Lives, and Testament. He lives in Tuscany, Italy.

Table of Contents

Preface xiii

Part 1 After the Great Pyramids - History and Hieroglyphs

1 The Story up to Now - A History in Pyramids 3

2 Writing Changes Everything 5

3 Reviving Hardjedef? 14

Part 2 Making 'Ancient Egypt' - Champollion and his Successors

4 In the Beginning 21

Mise en Scène 21

Lettre a M. Dacier 23

5 The Road to Memphis 30

Champollion in Turin 30

A Point of View 32

Ways and Means - The Innocence of Knowledge 34

Counting Kings - The Turin Canon 35

Counting Time - Into an Unknown Past 39

Champollion Triumphans 43

6 Aftermath 48

Three Kingdoms - The Chevalier Bunsen 48

Denkmäler - Professor Lepsius 51

The Legacy - Champollion's Ancient Egypt 54

Part 3 Old Kingdom - The Giza Kings, 2625-2500 BC

7 The Eloquence of Statues 63

The Giza Sphinx - Stone and History 63

Khafre and the Golden Hawk 65

Hard Histories - A Lineage of Statuary 69

Placing Pharaoh - The Figure at the Centre 73

8 Finding Menkaure - The Excavations of George Andrew Reisner, 1906-10 77

Pyramid Temple 77

Valley Temple 80

9 Royal Households 84

Kings and Queens 84

Queens and Goddesses 87

Mortal and Immortal 88

10 After Giza 91

Marking Time 91

The Palermo Stone and other Annals 92

Time Present and Time Past 96

Time and History 100

Part 4 Old Kingdom - Abusir and After, 2500-2200 BC

11 Abusir and Saqqara 105

Borchardt at Abusir 105

A History in Pyramids 109

Dissolution 112

Restoration 114

12 Meat, Bread and Stone - An Economy of Offering 119

Heliopolis 119

The Abusir Papyri 124

Sun Temples and Slaughterhouses 127

The Value and the Worth of Things 133

13 The Living Court 140

Per'a - The Palace 140

Constancy and Change 145

Modelling the Universe 148

14 The Living Kingdom 151

Copper and the Kings 151

Neki-ankh at Tihna 152

Visiting the Tombs 154

All Along the Valley 157

Scenes from Life 161

15 Cult and Kingdom 169

Of Courtly Cults 169

A History of Gods 173

Seen and Unseen 175

Part 5 Old Kingdom - Ancient Records, Ancient Lives

16 Papyrus to Stone 181

Letters from a King 181

Words and Writing 184

Brief Lives - The Savour of a Courtly Past 186

17 Writing in the Pyramids 194

After Abusir - A History in Pyramids 194

Into the Crypt 199

The Voice inside the Pyramid 203

18 The Dead and the Quick - Processing the Past 206

1880 AD - The Pyramid Texts Discovered 206

Stone to Paper - From Saqqara to Berlin 214

'Studiosus Philologiae' - The Conquest of the Past 218

Grammars and Dictionaries 220

Ancient Records, Modern Histories 224

19 Interpreting the Pyramids 227

Kurt Sethe and the Pyramid Texts 227

Timely Meditations 230

The Bones of the Hell-Hounds Tremble - Primitivism and the Berlin Seminars 232

Reading in the Dark 238

20 Look at Us! - Meet the Courtiers 240

Image and Presentation 240

Ranks and Titles 244

Ordering the Kingdom - Land and Society 249

The Court Abroad 256

Deserts, Boats and Donkeys - The Great Explorers 259

Rich and Richer - Weni of Abydos 273

Part 6 Interregnum -2200-2140 BC

21 Suddenly it Stops 281

History without Pyramids 281

Lamentations and Admonitions 284

Memphis, Herakleopolis and Thebes 287

Why the Centre Had Not Held 290

The Existential Smash-up 297

A Brave New Age - Ankhtifi at Mo'alla 299

Nomes and Nomarchs 303

Peace and War 305

Famine and Plenty 308

Tombs of the Times 309

A Very Local Festival 311

Part 7 Middle Kingdom - Remaking the State, 2140-1780 BC

22 Sema Towy - Binding the Kingdom 317

Names and Graves - A Chronology of Kings 317

The King, the Palace and the State - Designing a New Kingdom 321

At the Beginning - Eastern Thebes 326

Rising like Temples - Western Thebes 330

North to Itj-towy - Moving Close to Memphis 337

Heliopolis and Abydos - Re and Osiris 339

The Mansions of Amun-Re - The Festivals of Thebes 344

23 The Court of Thebes 354

The King's Men - Wadi el-Shatt el-Rigal 354

Sandstone and Limestone 357

Names and Titles 360

The Court Assembled - Western Thebes 363

The Royal Household 366

A Farmer's Archive - The Heqanakht Papyri 371

24 The Materials of State - The Court at Work 379

Copper - The Mines of Sinai 379

Incense - High Sahara 384

The Wonderful Things of Punt 387

Carnelian, Amethyst and Siltstone - The Egyptian Deserts 398

Alabaster - Beside the Nile 407

25 The Levant and Nubia 414

Travellers to an Antique Land 414

The Sinai Station - A Levantine Synthesis 424

Levantine Settlements - Amorites and Tell el-Dab'a 429

Nubian Fortresses 436

Part 8 Middle Kingdom - The Re-made State, 2000-1660 BC

26 The Court at Home 455

The Royal Settlement of Itj-towy 455

A Royal Audience 460

Feeding Pharaoh - Sustaining Itj-towy 464

Floods and the Fayum 469

27 Living in the State 478

Working for the State - The Thinis Dockyards 478

Housing by the State - The Settlement at el-Lahun 481

Community and Being 489

Epilogue - Reflections on a Golden Age 496

The Poetry of Craftsmanship - Middle Kingdom Material Culture 496

Images of Kings 501

Looking Back, Looking Forward - Senwosret III's Abydos Tomb 506

The Mind's Eye - Middle Kingdom Literature 512

Murdered by Eunuchs? - Modern History and Ancient Literature 515

The Ending 520

Chronology 523

Bibliography 527

List of Maps and Figures 607

List of Plates 617

Acknowledgements 619

Index 620

Editorial Reviews

10/15/2016
Romer has worked on archaeological digs throughout Egypt since 1966 and in the late 1970s served as leader of the Brooklyn Museum expedition to excavate the tomb of Ramesses XI. The first of this two-volume study won strong reviews (LJ gave it a star); in this second volume, Romer argues that Egypt was not the arena of cruel rulers and constant warfare initially envisioned by archaeologists.

Library Journal