Substack cometh, and lo it is good. (Pricing)

Open Thread, 11/02/2014

9780553384901_custom-03bf62c02636f5ea634b287f063653c82bd55fa6-s6-c30Daylight savings time. Sleeping in!

Nearly done with Toby Wilkinson’s The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt, and very much enjoyed it. I’m a big fan of scholarly surveys which can fill in my picture of the past. To be honest the most I’ve read about ancient Egypt since I was a child is probably in works such as A History of the Ancient Near East ca. 3000 – 323 BC or the fascinating Brotherhood of Kings: How International Relations Shaped the Ancient Near East. It strikes me as pretty important to get a better understanding and mental picture of a society whose framework serves as an unstated backdrop to much of our understanding of early human history.

The only issue I might take with Wilkinson’s treatment is that it leans a bit too much toward narrative diplomatic history, as opposed to the social and cultural texture of ancient Egypt. Then again, emphasizing battles and pharaohs probably makes it much more readable for most of the audience, and perhaps it says something that this is the first full length history of ancient Egypt I’ve read front to back in in nearly two decades.

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