Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization

by Barry J. Kemp

This comprehensive survey of Egyptian society and history transforms our understanding of this remarkable civilisation.

Genres: History, Egypt, Nonfiction, Egyptology, Archaeology, Ancient History, Africa

368 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1989

About the author

Professor Barry Kemp is Emeritus Professor of Egyptology at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge. He has been Field Director at Tell el-Amarna since 1977, pioneering excavations formerly for the Egypt Exploration Society, and now as The Amarna Project supported by the Amarna Trust. His important publications include Amarna Reports, I-VI (EES, 1984-95) and Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilisation (Routledge, 2nd ed., 2006).

Reviews

[Mesoscope · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first thing a prospective reader should bear in mind about this interesting and useful book is that it is not a history. Kemp is an archaeologist and this book is very much oriented toward archaeological evidence and data. What history this book contains if provided to contextualize and interpret that data. This book does contain an enormous amount of information of historical interest, but it is not intended to offer a historical overview or narrative.

Its purpose is admirably served by Kemp's sweeping and up-to-date review of various findings. Considering materials dating from the Neolithic period to the invasion of Alexander the Great, he deftly explores what we know -- and what we do not know -- about the nature of life along the Nile during that vast expanse of time.

Kemp's primary orientation is political and economic material and he strikes this reader as heavily influenced by Marx. This especially comes across in his handling of Egyptian religious material, which I found to be the weakest part of the book. Kemp is tone deaf to religious literature and treats it purely as ideology. But if the purpose of archaeology is to understand, we cannot understand a thing without understanding how it functioned in people's actual lives. Whatever one's personal beliefs, a purely ideological analysis of religious material remains very much at the surface.

Another minor criticism is that Routledge is stingy with photographs in a book that positively cries out for lavish illustration. The overwhelming majority of illustrations are two- or three-tone line drawings.

For a reader who is interested in what this book has to offer, I can unreservedly recommend it. It was engaging from start to finish and gave a wonderful sense of what we know about Ancient Egypt and how we know it.

[Tymciolina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Proza życia w cieniu piramid.

Zwykliśmy patrzeć na starożytny Egipt z monumentalnej perspektywy. Olbrzymie świątynie, jeszcze większe piramidy i faraonowie górujący nad pokonanym wrogiem. Barry'ego Kempa emerytowanego prof. uniwersytetu w Cambridge nie pociągało takie ujęcie historii - kto wygrał, kto przegrał, utożsamianie się z jedną ze stron, zerojedynkowe odpowiedzi i proste rozwiązania.

Autor ukazuje starożytny Egipt jako organizm. Próbuje odkryć znaczenie poszczególnych organów i ich wzajemne powiązania. W rezultacie historii politycznej jest tu jak na lekarstwo. Osoby, które oczekują linearnej relacji o dziejach Egiptu mogą się srogo zawieść. Zamiast tego autor stara się dokopać do jądra cywilizacji egipskiej. Jak powstała, dlaczego trwała i jakie formy w rzeczywistości przyjmowała. Kemp przedstawia dylematy archeologów i obala stereotypy. Szczególnie wiele rozdziałów poświęconych jest omówieniu prac wykopaliskowych na typowych dla danej epoki stanowiskach, co ukazuje jak faktycznie przebiegała ewolucja kultury egipskiej i jakie miejsce zajmowali w niej władcy, kapłani i zwykli ludzie. Autor nie stroni przy tym od drobiazgów i omawia nie tylko samą instytucję faraonów czy ekonomię opartą na handlu barterowym, ale i pochyla się nad kwestiami przyziemnymi jak produkcja piwa czy chleba.

Polecam. Niezwykle ciekawa pozycja.

[strategian]

This is history at its most aloof. Maybe that's to be expected given the title, but it doesn't make for particularly enjoyable reading. This book is extremely informative and covers a huge swathe of material across thousands of years and contextualises that material very well prosaically but I can't recommend it for anyone looking to learn about Ancient Egypt. The author approaches things from the topmost perspective and gives overviews of concepts like identity and the state (across all of Egyptian history) with reference to archaeological material. There's no attempt at constructing a thorough image of Ancient Egypt. It might be impossible to do that because of how long an epoch such an image would have to cover, but Kemp doesn't try to provide images of multiple eras of Egypt either. His focus is predominantly on contrasting old kingdom iconography and historical practice with middle and new, to demonstrate the dynamic aspects of the 'civilisation' often buried under popular conceptions built on monuments and ancient historical propaganda. Perhaps for Egyptologists that's fascinating, but for the amateur, not so: you don't get a better idea of what Ancient Egypt "was like" in its old, middle or new incarnation, all you learn is that our understanding of it being one enduring and unchanging culture is false and that some parts of it changed drastically with the passage of time.

I think this book would have real value for a very small section of people: 1) Archaeologists looking for an introduction to some of the interpretations of the most significant historic sites; 2) University students looking for references to primary source material for their Ancient Egypt assignments.

[Mac · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bust.

What a waste of such fabulous knowledge. This work, and all the brilliance it contains, are so tainted by the author's Marxism (?) as to turn every little historic topic into modern social commentary. Unbearable.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Be warned, this is not a narrative history of Ancient Egypt. Think of it as a collection of interpretive essays based on archaeological evidence. You will learn a lot by reading Kemp's detailed and deeply thoughtful text, but you really have to have read at least one narrative history of Ancient Egypt for this text to have any meaning. If I were a student studying archaeology, I would expect to read this book as an upper division or graduate level text. That being said, Barry Kemp writes a few passages which are stunningly insightful., the rest is quite good.

[Brett Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kemp writes a terrific survey of ancient Egypt. He digs into nuance, specific details, and widescale causes and implications for why Egypt took the paths it did throughout three occasions of rise and fall over 5000 years, including its predynastic, pre-state era. What makes his treatment so engaging is his high-altitude perspective on Egypt as a prototype for “civilization.” Early on, Kemp elaborates why at age 77, he would sink so much effort into the 3rd edition of this text, years after his retirement from Oxford. In 2018, after Trump’s election, after Orban’s conversion of Hungary and fascism’s near success by Marie Le Pen in France, he wrote, “I recall a wish somehow to convey an angry feeling that the story of ancient Egypt is simultaneously a record of human achievement in the distant past and a pointer to the future of humanity — which is with us now — to face the destructive consequences of those achievements.” One might hear echoes of Patrick J. Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed with its suspicion that the seeds of our own republic’s demise were unwittingly planted by the Founders and Enlightenment itself, but with the additional penalties (and there were benefits) of all that came before it. In the chronic search for replacements of true community in place for 60,000 years since the Cognitive Revolution 70,000 years ago and after the Agricultural Revolution destroyed such communities starting 10,000 years ago, Kemp notes, “What mostly characterizes the history of humanity as a whole since the Neolithic [he means since the commencement of agriculture] is the conscious search for improved systems…” Because, as Harari points out in Sapiens, we torpedoed ourselves and the planet with the Agricultural Catastrophe.

Kemp dabbles only slightly in the psychological causes for civilization’s failure — that question bedeviling historians and today’s 2022 Americans — with speculation on what he calls a universal human perversity. “Whilst one direction of human endeavor is towards inhabiting a stable system,” writes Kemp, “a cozy home under a harmonious community under a benign government, at every level a triumph of order over chaos — it stands constantly in tension with jagged moments of long-nurtured schemes of rejection… In the long run, it seems, complacency is an unsustainable condition, and hard-won stability an abhorrence. When a time of tribulation has passed, people grow bored with consensus and prosperity.”

I liked this volume so much I expanded a blog piece for it. A well-done book on ancient Egypt, including bonus treatment on human beings and the largescale pitfalls of being what we are.

[Yoshiro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Barry J. Kemp to brytyjski archeolog i egiptolog, który nieprzerwanie od początku lat 60. poświęca się pasji poznawania tajemnic starożytnego Egiptu. Nie można więc sobie wyobrazić lepszego i bardziej docenionego w środowisku naukowym specjalisty od tego tematu. W recenzowanej publikacji, jak sam tytuł wskazuje, stara się on zaprezentować czytelnikowi wyjątkowość państwa egipskiego, jak i całej tamtejszej cywilizacji. W swojej pracy opiera się on na licznych badaniach archeologicznych i najnowszej wiedzy historycznej, dzięki której współczesny człowiek może odkryć i zrozumieć specyfikę dawnych Egipcjan oraz po części wpływ przeszłości na czasy obecne.

Kemp w publikacji stara się pokazać starożytny Egipt jako podstawę pewnych rozwijających się aspektów myśli (obywatela) i organizacji (państwa). W rozbudowanym wstępie prezentuje on najważniejsze pojęcia, uporządkowuje pewne ukazane w treści dowody na potwierdzenie swoich dalszych tez, przedstawia uwagi na temat krajobrazu czy chronologii. Jest to również fragment publikacji, w której jasno daje on do rozumienia, że całość książki naznaczona jest jego przekonaniami, co na całe szczęście nie wpływa na jego obiektywizm. Dalsza treść została podzielona na trzy zasadnicze części. W pierwszej omawia on genezę państwa i wczesny rozwój kultury (okres Archaiczny i Stare Państwo). Kolejny rozdział poświęcony zostaje rozwojowi „biurokracji” i jego znaczeniu dla kształtowania się państwa oraz stara się on tutaj ukazać „modelowy” obraz egipskiej społeczności (całość opiera się głównie na okresie Państwa Środka). Trzecia część poświęcona zostaje strukturze ekonomicznej, różnym aspektom duchowym i świeckim, silnym i słabym stronom państwa oraz różnorodności warstw społecznych.

Mamy tutaj do czynienia z naprawdę bogatym dziełem, gdzie autor w pomysłowy i niezwykle zwięzły sposób stara się ukazać cechy cywilizacji egipskiej. Kolejne strony mocno naznaczone są analizą kulturowej odrębności tego regionu i mentalności jego mieszkańców. W swojej pracy często odnosi się on do „jednostki” (ukazując jej zwykłą codzienną egzystencję), jako ważnej części większej całości, którą można nazwać „państwem”. Podejście twórcy do poruszonych tutaj zagadnień jest naprawdę szczegółowe, obiektywne i zaskakująco wciągające. Tak jak zostało to już wspomniane, niektóre treści naznaczone są również osobistymi przekonaniami twórcy i jego własną oceną podstaw egiptologii. Obok tego dodatkowo można tu znaleźć wiele współczesnych analogii przytaczanych przez autora, które nie tylko są bardzo trafne co mocno pouczające.

https://popkulturowykociolek.pl/recen...

[Ana Flores · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The history of the world is not an account of the development of innumerable pools of merging cultures and points of consciousness. It is the record of the slow subjugation of people to polities of increasing size, ambition and complexity, sometimes with and sometimes without their consent. When they are small and 'primitive' we are accustomed to call them chiefdoms. When large, hierarchical and incorporating many specialist groups they become states."

Libro denso, de paso lento o más bien lenta lectura, e interesante sin embargo, probablemente indispensable para estudiantes de historia antigua y muy útil para el lego interesado en estos temas, que, más que un relato o relación de hechos históricos concretos (tan escasos y dificiles de recobrar), es un amplio comentario sobre la civilización del Antiguo Egipto, una consciente y lúcida reflexión sobre la forma en que debemos acercarnos a la evidencia, la interpretación honesta y crítica de la información, para no caer en los equívocos y excesos de la primera arqueología, tan necesitada (como en general sigue ocurriendo) de una telenovela que contar.

Al igual que el libro sobre Oriente Medio de Mario Liverani, que ya comentara hace tiempo, éste de Barry Kemp constituye toda una filosofía de la historia, que invita a avocarse a la evidencia, realizar hipótesis razonadas, fundadas en datos concretos e interpretar así el pasado de forma honesta y lo más realista posible, incluso si eso implica reconocer que jamás conoceremos más que una mínima fracción de todo lo que fue aquella civilización hace tanto tiempo muerta.

Basándose sobre todo en datos arqueológicos (y no podría hacerlo de otro modo), el texto por momentos es de veras pesado, se vuelve dificil avanzar en él y, al menos a mí, me hizo ir dilatando su lectura, leyéndolo por partes y no de corrido como suelo, pese a no ser ya primeriza en estos libros de historia-arqueología. Supongo que he estado algo distraída últimamente.

En fin, útil e interesante sí que lo es.

[DAJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kemp analyzes aspects of ancient Egyptian society that general books about it tend to gloss over, such as its cityscapes, its economy, and its administration. He looks at these topics from a largely archaeological perspective and uses particular sites as examples of his themes, such as Hierakonpolis for the formation of the Early Dynastic state, Kahun for the state planning of the Middle Kingdom, and Theban evidence for the mature form of the Egyptian state in the New Kingdom.

The original, 1989 edition of the book ended with a chapter on Amarna. Thus, it fell into the all-too-common Egyptological habit of ignoring developments after 1000 BC. The second edition, from 2006, replaced the Amarna chapter with one that points out that deficiency in scholarship and discusses each of the intermediate periods, as well as the Late and Greco-Roman eras. The third edition in 2018, rather frustratingly, replaces that chapter in turn with a rewritten chapter about Amarna, so to get the full benefit of Kemp's work, you would have to read the second and third editions.

Kemp brings an unusual viewpoint to Egyptology. It's often very insightful. An early chapter discusses how the Egyptians invented a traditional set of architectural motifs early in their history, then constantly reworked and combined them in new ways—making it look like they were maintaining age-old traditions even when they were making dramatic innovations. Egyptologists, trying to reconstruct ancient Egyptian culture based on what would fit with known Egyptian tradition, can end up unwittingly recombining ideas in the same way.

My major complaint is that Kemp's treatment of religion seems rather superficial. He doesn't ignore it, by any means, but he downplays how much power it had to shape society and tends to see it in materialistic, even cynical terms. (He even wrote a journal article in 1995 that apparently downplayed personal religiosity to an outlandish degree; Robert Ritner tartly remarked in 2008 that "The idiosyncratic article has gained no following.") But Kemp's attitude does serve to balance out the tendency among other Egyptologists to exaggerate the influence of religious ideology over practical considerations.

Anyone wanting to understand the workings of ancient Egyptian society should read this book, but Kemp's perspective is a little too eccentric for it to stand on its own as your go-to source.

[Arthur · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meticulous, but often mechanistic — where’s the texture of lived reality?

Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization impresses with its structural clarity and encyclopedic breadth. Kemp approaches Egyptian civilization not through its monuments alone, but through its social scaffolding — labor, administration, belief systems. That should make this a foundational text. And in some ways, it is.

But reading it feels more like sorting through a classified archive than being invited into a world. There is an overwhelming emphasis on systems and abstractions, yet a striking absence of sensory, spatial or material immediacy. Kemp’s descriptions rarely evoke — they analyze. Temples are reduced to their ideological functions, not their acoustics, their light, their dust. People become roles. Ritual becomes structure. The human pulse is faint.

The book also suffers from tonal flatness. The prose is careful, sometimes clinical, and the organization occasionally feels circular — like being led around the same administrative complex from slightly different angles. I often found myself craving concrete visual anchors or more integration of visual culture into the social theory.

For readers who thrive on macro-structure and intellectual scaffolding, this will be deeply satisfying. But those seeking emotional texture, phenomenological insight, or a sense of embodied space may leave with more questions than understanding.

[Weronika Wijas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Podchodziłam do Kempa dwa razy. Za pierwszym, kilka lat temu byłam dość rozczarowana i nie rozumiałam fenomenu książki (co wynikało z mojego dość skromnego wówczas rozeznania w temacie, but anyway). Dzisiaj, po zakończeniu, lektury z dumą traktuję ją jako potwierdzenie własnej wiedzy zdobytej w upływie tego czasu, mogąc konfrontować tezy Kempa ze znanymi mi opiniami historyków :)) I moim zdaniem to jest właśnie największy atut książki- zachęcanie do samodzielnego wyciągania wniosków, analizy, do czego wręcz zachęca obszerne spojrzenie na starożytny Egipt i przywołanie licznych świadectw archeologicznych (choć, przyznam że niekiedy męczyły mnie opisy i wymiary miast ;)). Moim zdaniem jedna z bardziej oryginalnych książek o starożytnym Egipcie, polecajka!

[Martín Álvarez Rodríguez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Historia genérica del Antiguo Egipto. Libro recomendado para los que quieran obtener una visión panorámica del Egipto de los faraones, especialmente desde el punto de vista arqueológico.
Sin embargo hay que tener en cuenta la antigüedad de la obra y el escaso valor de las conclusiones del autor, enmarcadas en un estructuralismo boyante en los años 80, pero que casi acaba cayendo en el ridículo al sobredimensionar tanto el aspecto simbólico y religioso, sin abordar a penas una institución social de gran importancia como la esclavitud.

[Antonio Barradas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truly enjoyable book on Egyptian archeology.

For those who enjoy archeology and history based on findings coming from what those findings.

Well written and deep on content around culture, social customs and economy.

[Karolina Wydra]

Bardzo ciekawe i przyjemnie się czyta!!

[Rob Marshall · Rating 5 out of 5]

One word! Excellent!

[Monique Roddy · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE book on ancient egypt as a society. he's perpetually referenced in articles by others, and the book makes a wonderful read despite being a text book. a complete rework of his first edition, but most of the stuff is still there, it's just completely reorganized. is it sad i'm putting my text books up here??

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent read. As per prior reviews, more archaeology than strict history, but fascinating nonetheless. Would have liked a bibliography(!)? My 2nd ed. has decent notes, but left out a bibliography altogether. Color me nonplussed.

Despite paucity of photographs (also noted by previous reviewer), illustrations/maps are well-conceived and convey abundant information efficiently.

[Jamal Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

very very very detailed book that can be a bore. this was a text for one of my upper div courses.

[Madly Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

TO REREAD 2016

[Ellis Morning · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting and informative, but definitely not light reading. I consider it something to check out after you've familiarized yourself with Ancient Egypt through more introductory sources.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great reference. There is a more recent and updated edition, I believe.

[Tabitha Rucker]

on OhioLink and in Otterbein's Library