Read Online The Oxford History Of Ancient Egypt Drafted By Ian Shaw Displayed In Digital

is part of my efforts to read behind a World History course that I'm currently teaching, I left the Near East and Egypt for last because I was relatively well acquainted with the material, This is, of course, a collection of different scholars and gives a series of perspectives, The studies are uniformly strong contributions and give a detailed survey of the ancient Egyptian period, This is an excellent place to start a study of Egypt's history and quite readable, As usual in the Oxford Historyseries, this compilation offers a good overview of ancient Egyptian history, always by specialists and therefore scientifically sound, Only, in practice it is actually more of a chronicle, focused on political and administrative aspects and to a lesser extent on artistic achievements, Economy, social relations, the broad culture and especially religion are touched upon very to a lesser extent, See the very critical review from my GR friend Czarny, sitelinkhere, Moreover, it contains hardly any illustrations, at least in my Kindle edition strangely, the series is called "The Illustrated History", only some sketchy maps and no charts at all.
This book is now also more thanyears old, so it is no longer completely uptodate, On the positive side, it is well edited, A view on the more interesting things I learned in my historical account on Goodreads: sitelink goodreads. com/review/show . The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt
Ian Shaw Credited
Read it in paper back at a very longpages,

OTC Historic Side Pots first read, and what a challenging beginning to this whole shenanigans, A lot of us have a pretty big interest in history even though we all like different time periods, so we decided on four books this year to start delving into Ancient History.
The Mediterranean has the most easily identifiable and well documented history, thus we started with Egypt,

Ian Shaw is credited with writing this, but it covers a very large amount of history, broken into sections, and widely written by a host of people including Stan Hendrix, Pierre Vermeersch, Beatrix MidantReynes, Kathryn Bard, Jaromir Malek, Stephen Seidlmayer, Gae Callender, Janine Bourriau, Betsy Bryan, Jacobus Van Dijk, John Taylor, Alan Lloyd, and David Peacock.
A wellestablished list of contributors,

As noted, it's a large breadth of history starting at about,BC till about major occupation and control by Rome inBC and closingAD.
As it turns out, we don't know all that much about early human history and what we do know is all provided by archeology instead of written word which makes much of this very dry but informative, probably more exciting if human waste piles and pottery shards are your thing.
For us, it made for some difficult early reading, It moves onto cover the early pyramids, the most famous ones built in very early Egypt, The fact that they were able to leverage such a large work force, come up with lasting architectural monuments with nearly pin point positioning, and culturally deep enough to motivate their creation, is most inspiring.
From this initial base Egypt creates an empire that's astonishing and nearly unheard of at the time, The established list of contributors each cover portions of time in which the empire goes through rises, glory days, bad leadership, divisions, wars, and everything else that happens over thousands of years of existence.
All of this precariously pieced together from monuments and the boastful inscriptions that adorn them,

But that's kind of one of the problems, The subject matter is so vast and the inscriptions provide a hazy picture at best which makes it hard to get a really good idea of what happened in many occasions.
Due to heavy theft, disregard for their cultural heritage places, and the ever whisper of time it just gets harder, If you are looking for a conclusive history of every period minus details of Roman occupation of Egyptian Antiquity, look no further, This book does not cover Egyptian religion with much detail beyond notable funeral cults and basic traditions and deities, From that perspective it's a bit disappointing,

So while infinitely interesting the Oxford History of Ancient Egypt incredibly dry, This was the primary complaint with the tomb, Out of four people attempting we had three complete, but we won't be grading these, Since this was our first book for this and I didn't really know how it would go, I kind of dropped the ball and our meeting wasn't as stimulating as I had hoped as our conversation lacked any structure, something I will need to remedy for Greece.


Happy Reading and onto Greece, the next rock in our path,
Blending vividly written essays and over a hundred attractive illustrationsincludingcolor platesThe Oxford History of Ancient Egypt is a stunningly designed and authoritative account of the once glorious civilization on the Nile.

Ranging from,BC toAD, this volume portrays the emergence and development of Egypt from its prehistoric roots to its conquest by the Roman Empire.
The contributorsall leading scholars working at the cutting edge of Egyptologyincorporate the latest findings in archaeological
research as they chart the principal political events of Egyptian history, from the rise of the Pharaohs and the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great, to the ascension of the Ptolemies and the coming of Roman legions.
The book also includes the first detailed examinations of three periods which
were previously regarded as "dark ages, " Against the backdrop of the birth and death of ruling dynasties, the writers also examine cultural and social patterns, including stylistic developments in art and literature, monumental architecture, funerary beliefs, and much more.
The contributors
illuminate the underlying patterns of social and political change and describe the changing face of ancient Egypt, from the biographical details of individuals to the social and economic factors that shaped the lives of the people as a whole.

The only uptodate, singlevolume history of ancient Egypt available in English, The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt is a "must read" for everyone interested in one of the great civilizations of antiquity.
The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt is thorough very thorough, in a manner characteristic of the Oxford histories, Eminent scholars from Europe, North America, and Australia though, oddly, no scholars from Egyptian universities contribute different chapters, and a complete picture of pharaonic society emerges over the course of the book.
Rather than reading this dense and demanding text chronologically, you may find it easier to pick out your

own particular area of interest and read those parts of the book first.
I've always been particularly interested in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt, and after reading those chapters I found it easier to delve into the intricacies of the various kingdoms and dynasties and intermediate periods.
Very well illustrated with color plates, photographs, maps, graphs, and diagrams that capture well the grandeur and dynamism of pharaonic Egypt's material culture, This Oxford history enhances the reader's understanding of an intriguing ancient civilization, Very mixed feelings on this book, On one hand, I am very glad I read it, Theres a TON of knowledge to be gained here, and Im really grateful to have a pretty good grasp on the entirety of Egyptian history until the middle of the Roman era.
Having that general knowledge allows me to read more in depth on specific eras, which Im interested in doing in the future, However this book was insufferably boring in some parts, Each chapter is written by a different expert in that period, and some seemed to be trying to make it as dry as possible, Some were very interesting, but a good half of this book was just hard to get through, So Im glad I have read this, but would only recommend it to the most diehard history buffs, Chock full of information, not easy reading, Very dry and achaeological. Many long lists of kings, And pottery, lots of pottery, I certainly know far more about ancient Egypt than ever before, that's for sure, I'd just read the story of the children of Israel walking across the Red Sea on dry ground in the Bible,
The thought came to me to wonder what Egypt was like after they left, The land had been striped bare of foliage, many, many dead people and animals, the entire army dead after the ten plagues and the Red Sea crossing.

I got this book to see what happened to them and how they recovered after such a devastating blow to every aspect of their lives.

This book mentions "nothing" about any of that, It's like they're in complete denial, and this is a book that Egyptologists study, This reminded me of a college anthropology teacher, I asked him how did the flood appear on anthropological digs, He said there is no trace that a flood ever happened,
This is the part where I choose to have faith and believe,

If you want to learn which of the pharaohs built monuments to themselves this is the book for you, Sekadar rujukan bagi menjayakan projek M For the past few decades Oxford University Press has published a number of books that offer wellillustrated surveys authored by some of the leading scholars in their fields.
Their volume on ancient Egypt is fully representative of the series, as under the editorship of Ian Shaw fourteen authors provide fifteen essays summarizing their subject.
As is the case with such collections the writing varies in quality, but the authors are never less than assured in their command of their respective subjects.
Their approach is generally chronological stretching from the Paleolithic era to Egypt's years as a province of Rome, Unfortunately the enormous span of time covered allows for only the broadest coverage, which the authors use to recount the various dynasties and some of the key monarchs within them.
There is much discussion of the archaeological evidence and what it reveals about Egyptian civilization, particularly in the early chapters while informative, the sheer number of tombs and statuary mentioned can cause them to blur together over the course of the book.
The archaeological evidence also reinforces the focus on monarchs, the elite, and Egypt's funerary culture, at the expense of any coverage of the daily lives and broader social history of the Egyptian people.
This unfortunate omission limits what is otherwise an efficient survey of thousands of years of Egyptian history, one that provides a good springboard for a deeper study of the subject.
This is a really excellent collaborative history of Ancient Egyptthough dense and detailed enough that it's probably only for the serious Egyptophile or the aspiring student.
It runs from the Palaeolithic era right through to the postPtolemaic period, which is an enormous time frame, but Shaw and the other contributors do a good job of addressing all the main developments and key eventsthe only real disappointment is the chapter on the Amarna period, which fails to be as comprehensive as the others.
Aesthetically, it's well put together, with plenty of blackandwhite and coloured plates, maps, time lines and genealogical charts, Definitely recommended. Obviously Written by an aerchaeologist I can say I learnt absolutely nothing about Ancient Egypt, One would think that the only people of any importance was the Pharoeh and the only things of interest were their burials! Awful! I normally hate anthologies, or history/archaeology books written by multiple authors.
This is an exception for me, While each chapter focusing on a period of Egyptian history was written by a different author, they flowed smoothly, The book is filled with useful maps, photos, and illustrations which supplement the excellent text, I found this readable, and know I will use it as a reference in the future,
Great survey volume for those who already have a grip on historical and archaeological practices and terminology, Not a volume for those with no prior interest or study of history outside of high school, If a reader is just beginning to wonder about ancient Egyptian history, they should hold off reading this and pick up a few of the basic historical atlases first to acclimate and educate themselves on some of the ways we've deduced the knowledge collected in this book.
Diving right into this book without some preparatory reading will probably bore those casually interested in the subject, Examples of what to read before this would be "The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Civilizations" or "The New Penguin Atlas of Ancient History", They'll prime a beginner for the greater depth and focus offered in this excellent survey, This reader on Ancient Egyptian history may not be perfect see my review in my general account on Goodreads sitelinkhere, it contains a lot of material that is interesting enough.
Here, I want to focus on two aspects that I found worthwhile, First, the article on what is called the second intermediate period, the time between the Middle Kingdom and the New Kingdom, roughly betweenandbce.
For decades, historians and archaeologists have debated the label of the socalled "Hyksos" who ruled most of Egypt during this period, The consensus used to be that Ancient Egypt was occupied at that time by a people who came from outside, Hyksos is a Greek transcription of the Egyptian term 'Hekau Khasut', literally "rulers from foreign lands", This implies that there would have been an invasion and subsequently an enslavement of the native Egyptian population,

At the end of the twentieth century, the understanding grew that this was a purely propagandistic representation by the 'counterempire' that arose around that time in Upper Egypt from the city of Thebes and that was rather xenophobic in opposition to what it pejoratively called the 'aamu', tha Asians.
This demystification, in turn, prompted some scholars to label the entire Hyksos story as a myth and reject the term altogether, Among others, the French overview work that I recently read, sitelinkL'Égypte des pharaons de Narmer,av, J. C. à Dioclétien,ap. J. C. sustains this view, and confirms there was no real Hyksos period,

But In this Oxford History I read a much more nuanced story, Jeanine Bourriau emphasizes that already at the beginning of thend millennium BCE, large groups of immigrants from the Levant and Upper Mesopotamia gradually settled in the Delta area also called Lower Egypt.
Those immigrants took over a large part of the culture and identity of the 'classical' Egyptians, albeit with their own accents, so that to some extent you can speak of an EgyptianLevantine or an EgyptianCanaanite culture.
Seen from that perspective, the term Hyksos still seems legitimate to indicate how different that culture was from the previous periods, But it is of course quite another matter to label the culture of Upper Egypt as the only real, classical Egyptian culture, Bourriau seems to me to introduce the right nuance here,

A second interesting and equally nuanced chapter is that on the Amarna period, the brief episode c,bce in which pharaoh Amenhotep IV, under the name of Akhenaten, made very drastic changes, He not only moved the capital to Amarna, but also imposed the worship of the solar disc as the only cult allowed, In theth and much of theth century, the latter was very often presented as a failed experiment with pure monotheism, and the link with the Hebrews was being made very easily.
Almost all scientists have now abandoned this, But in this Oxford book, Jacobus Van Dijk states that a tendency had already arisen among Amenhotep's predecessors to build a state religion around the sun god, more or less anticipating the Amarnamove.
I notice from reading other scientific articles that this these is not accepted by all scientists, But there is more or less consensus that in the second half of the second millennium BCE a gradual transition was made from a religious experience in which the relationship with the deities moved almost exclusively through the person of the pharaoh to a more personal, direct relationship between the individual believer and the deity.
Among other things, the rise of the votive culture offerings to please the deity is seen in that respect, That may all seem very ethereal certainly from a secularized modernist point of view it is, in any case, a very interesting evolution, And it is also one that once again illustrates how little we still really know about that ancient Egyptian culture, and therefore how much room there is still for further research.
Fascinating!.