Cultured Travel Guide Books - Ancient Egypt |
![Ancient Egypt]() |
List Price: $98.00
Our Price: $36.96
Your Save: $ 61.04 ( 62% )
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Binding: Hardcover
EAN: 9781900131803
ISBN: 1900131803
Label: MacMillan
Manufacturer: MacMillan
Number Of Items: 1
Publication Date: 1997-12
Publisher: MacMillan
Studio: MacMillan |
| Spotlight Customer Reviews: |
Customer Rating:  
Summary: Informative for a coffee table book
Comment: Silverman provides a basic introduction to all the Egyptian essential through thorough articles and lots and lots of vivid pictures and illustratrions. This book is an excellent way to be introduced into the world of the heyday of Egypt, with lots of information, seemlessly organized.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Very thorough book on ancient Egypt, NOT a coffee table book
Comment: First of all, David Silverman is the editor and not the author, as the Amazon advertisement above leads you to believe. Each chapter (there are 15) is written by a different specialist in the field of Egyptology. Their credentials are listed in the dust jacket cover. They hold many different titles, are professors, university and museum curators, and all are experts in their given field. The chapter headings include "The Celestial Realm", "Egyptian Art", "Women in Egypt" and others. Aside from the wealth of knowledge, each chapter has beautful illustrations, photographs of the best of the artwork, statuary, jewelry, etc to illustrate what is being discussed. This may be the one book on ancient Egypt to have if you have to have just one. Chapter 2 even covers the history with a good overview, difficult when your're talking about 4000 or so years! NOT just a pretty coffee table book of the typical type, with more photographs than writing, and no explanation of what you're seeing.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Egypt book
Comment: the picture you present shows that the book is covered. I wouldn't have bought it as a gift if I knew it was not covered, and I don't remember it saying that it was not, so I was very dissappointed in this book. I felt silly giving that as a mothers day gift.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Love This Book
Comment: I absolutely love Ancient Egypt and all the books I've gotten before this were okay, but this book just blew me away.
Customer Rating:
Summary: NO BETTER GENERAL SURVEY BOOK ON THE SUBJECT.
Comment:
I bought my copy of this book in hardcover from The History Book Club back in 1997 as an alternate selection. From the first moment of opening this book back then to now, I have never changed my mind that this is one gem of a book on Ancient Egypt. I have been reading on the subject since 1963 and have some feeling for the subject, even though my college major was anthropology.
I disagree that this is merely a 'coffee table' book and I also disagree that this book is not suitable for a college 101 introductory course in Egyptology. With the scope of information and the colorful graphic content this book excels where many others only describe, thowing in a few black and white photos as they go. True this book has black and white illustrations but it abounds with color too.
While anyone interested in Ancient Egypt will probably not want to stop with just this volume, however, one could make due with it only and yet capture some of the exotic history of both this land and its people.
After more than a decade, still an excellent book, David P. Silverman.
Semper Fi.
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| More Reviews |
| Editorial Reviews: |
The ancient Egyptians lived in a remarkable culture that created some of the world's most beautiful art and architecture. It was a land where Pharaoh was the monarch of the entire world, the living emodiment on Earth of the god Horus, son of Osiris, ruler of the underworld. It was a culture that relied on the rising and falling of the Nile, but resided next to the Great Sahara, one of the hottest and driest deserts on the planet. Even today, the ancient civilization of Egypt--which produced the great pyramids, the riddle of the Sphinx, and the riches of Tutankhamum--exerts a strong hold on our imaginations.
Now, in Ancient Egypt, eminent Egyptologist David P. Silverman and a team of leading scholars explore the cultural wealth of this civilization in a series of intriguing and authoritative essays based on the latest theories and discoveries. Illustrated with more than 200 superb color photographs, maps, and charts, Ancient Egypt illuminates the vivid and powerful symbolic images of this fascinating culture--from pyramids and temples to priests and rituals; from hieroglyphic writing to daily life by the Nile; and from temple carvings to the cult of the dead. Correcting the popular misconception of the Egyptians as a death-obsessed people, the book uses the most recent historical research and archaeological finds to illuminate the routines of daily life in royal, elite, and priestly circles, as well as at lower levels of society.
We learn, for example, that despite the monochromatic appearance of most temple ruins today, in ancient times they would have been colorful, even gleaming structures; that the title "Pharaoh" derives from the Egyptian phrase per aa, which means "great house" and was originally a reference to the royal palace; that temples employed all manner of part-time and full-time personnel, from farmers and carpenters to scribes, jewellers, and keepers of livestock; and that Egyptian law viewed women as equal to men, and they could, in some cases, wield considerable influence.
Lavishly illustrated with beautiful color artwork, Ancient Egypt is an authoritative and accessible guide to the many dimensions of the ancient Egyptian world.
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