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Very Short Introductions #112
Ancient Egypt: A Very Short Introduction
The ancient Egyptians are an enduring source of fascination--mummies and pyramids, curses and rituals have captured our imaginations for generations. We all have a mental picture of ancient Egypt, but is it the right one? How much do we really know about this once great civilization?
In this absorbing introduction, Ian Shaw, one of the foremost authorities on Ancient Egypt, describes how our current ideas about Egypt are based not only on the thrilling discoveries made by early Egyptologists but also on fascinating new kinds of evidence produced by modern scientific and linguistic analyses. He also explores the changing influences on our responses to these finds, by examining the impact of Egyptology on various aspects of popular culture such as literature, cinema, opera, and contemporary art. He considers all aspects of ancient Egyptian culture, from tombs and mummies to the discovery of artifacts and the decipherment of hieroglyphs, and from despotic pharaohs to animal-headed gods. From the general reader interested in Ancient Egypt, to students and teachers of ancient history and archaeology, to museum-goers, this Very Short Introduction will not disappoint.
In this absorbing introduction, Ian Shaw, one of the foremost authorities on Ancient Egypt, describes how our current ideas about Egypt are based not only on the thrilling discoveries made by early Egyptologists but also on fascinating new kinds of evidence produced by modern scientific and linguistic analyses. He also explores the changing influences on our responses to these finds, by examining the impact of Egyptology on various aspects of popular culture such as literature, cinema, opera, and contemporary art. He considers all aspects of ancient Egyptian culture, from tombs and mummies to the discovery of artifacts and the decipherment of hieroglyphs, and from despotic pharaohs to animal-headed gods. From the general reader interested in Ancient Egypt, to students and teachers of ancient history and archaeology, to museum-goers, this Very Short Introduction will not disappoint.
208 pages, Paperback
First published June 22, 2004
81 people are currently reading
1322 people want to read
About the author
Ian Shaw
81 books33 followersDr. Ian Shaw (born 1961) is an Egyptologist and Reader in Egyptian archaeology at the University of Liverpool.
His field work was largely focused in el-Amarna, but in recent times, he has done extensive excavations of mining and quarrying sites from many different Ancient Egyptian periods. He primarily focuses his recent work on methods and mechanics of Egyptian craftsmen and laborers. However, he has produced several works regarding ancient Egyptian warfare; a topic that had long been ignored or only briefly commented on by other researchers.
Besides writing original books, he also has edited several "dictionaries" of Ancient Egypt (which might more correctly be labeled "encyclopedias"; they are in no way lexicons).
His field work was largely focused in el-Amarna, but in recent times, he has done extensive excavations of mining and quarrying sites from many different Ancient Egyptian periods. He primarily focuses his recent work on methods and mechanics of Egyptian craftsmen and laborers. However, he has produced several works regarding ancient Egyptian warfare; a topic that had long been ignored or only briefly commented on by other researchers.
Besides writing original books, he also has edited several "dictionaries" of Ancient Egypt (which might more correctly be labeled "encyclopedias"; they are in no way lexicons).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 101 reviews
January 11, 2023
I really enjoyed this, but it's not at all what I thought it would be. I was expecting a short history of Ancient Egypt, which this is not. It's mostly about Egyptology. It goes over how well known ideas of ancient Egypt got their start (sometimes through interpreting scenes from a single artifact!), and how further excavations showed those theories to be too simplistic or flat out wrong. I would have given the book five stars, except I don't think it makes a very good introduction at all. In fact, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who doesn't already have a cursory knowledge of ancient Egypt and archaeology. Without that, the details about digs, artifacts, and excavation methods, etc. could make for tedious reading. However, having taken classes on both subjects recently, I found it to be entertaining and full of fascinating details. It was even laugh out loud funny in places.
partially-read
March 18, 2021Like many other reviews for Ancient Egypt: A Very Short Introduction, this title is incredibly misleading.
It should be called: "Egyptology: A Very Short Introduction".
Instead of reading this any further, I'm off to Wikipedia
It should be called: "Egyptology: A Very Short Introduction".
Instead of reading this any further, I'm off to Wikipedia
July 2, 2018
I have to agree with other reviews; this book should rather have been titled “Egyptology: A Very Short Introduction”. The focus is mainly on how Egyptologists know what we know, the methods and techniques used, how study has progressed particularly with the advent of new technology that allows us to develop initial hypotheses or overturn them completely. Shaw covers some basic points about ancient Egypt itself, including the invention of writing and a very broad overview of ancient Egyptian religion. I must admit I am not sure what his purpose was in referring back to the Narmer Palette throughout the book, although it’s not an unwelcome choice. Shaw also spends time in discussing modern engagement with ancient Egypt, which takes up quite a lot of the text.
7 out of 10
April 16, 2015
Interesting, thought-provoking and concise, but not what I was looking for in a brief overview of Ancient Egypt. The book does not contain a clearly organized overview of the sort of topics one might expect in, say, a class on "Ancient Egypt": who were the major Egyptian gods? when were the regnal dates of the most well-known Egyptian pharaohs? how did Egyptian society come under the rule of Alexander and, later, the Romans? For me at least it raised more questions than it answered; not that that's a bad thing...
January 15, 2025
Another VSI (cf Classics, Music) that’s about the study of its topic more than its topic. Although it’s quite interesting, that’s disappointing in a series for general readers.
March 6, 2014
~4.6 hours
Fab series this, just right for a quick refresh.
Narmer Palette - a major theme in this introduction.3* Ancient Egypt
3* Paul
February 27, 2022
One of the more disappointing VSIs. More appropriately titled “Critiques and other comments concerning Egyptology”. The book is obsessed with minutiae of Egyptology: who proposed what and then disagreed by whom and things of that nature. And when it comes to the real knowledge about ancient Egypt, you are supposed to be versed about it already. Terms will not be defined before tossed in. Of course, everybody knows what predynastic period is, who Nefertiti is, and what ka, ba, or akh means.
December 1, 2022
The publisher understood that "Ancient Egypt" would be a better selling title than Egyptology. Well, ok. I wouldn't mind learning something about Egyptology as well. But the section with "Carry on, Cleo" (https://ibb.co/ZxdVdqN) really goes too far.
January 17, 2023
The Very Short intros are hit or miss IMO. This one leans very hard into the minutia of modern archaeology. At points, some interesting bits. But overall, unhelpful.
January 30, 2025
The book is very well done. The only problem is the title and marketing. Because this is not a history of ancient Egypt is more a short overview about the science of Egyptology. If you go into this book not knowing anything about ancient Egypt you will still barely know anything after reading it. That being said, its pretty good at giving you an introduction to egyptology.
June 28, 2015
I found it frustrating that a book entitled “A Very Short Introduction” to Ancient Egypt was so reliant on the reader starting with a background knowledge of the dynasties, pharaohs and places of Ancient Egypt. This would have been a more accessible read if less time was spent talking about the Narmer Palette (the author pretty much relates everything back to this artefact!), specifics of particular finds and misdirections of Egyptology, and more time was spent addressing how public perceptions of Egypt relate to reality.
Having said all that, I found my appreciation of the book grew the further I read, eventually culminating in a final chapter addressing popular culture and misconceptions – perhaps better as a starting point to ease people into the topics and seemingly grudgingly included. Some of my favourite findings from the book were:
* The depth of our knowledge on Ancient Egypt is very reliant on the grandiose funeral arrangements, dry conditions for preservation and writings on a number of different media.
* There's a lack of evidence supporting links between the bible and Judaism.
* Egyptology has shifted from studying religion and burial to society and settlements, allowing an increased understanding of homes, race, women and sexuality.
* Immigrants used to be seen as a pre-requisite for cultural change (e.g. takeover wars), but it's now apparent that smaller scale social changes slowly caused the big changes.
* It's very difficult to distinguish between the fictional and non-fictional accounts.
Having said all that, I found my appreciation of the book grew the further I read, eventually culminating in a final chapter addressing popular culture and misconceptions – perhaps better as a starting point to ease people into the topics and seemingly grudgingly included. Some of my favourite findings from the book were:
* The depth of our knowledge on Ancient Egypt is very reliant on the grandiose funeral arrangements, dry conditions for preservation and writings on a number of different media.
* There's a lack of evidence supporting links between the bible and Judaism.
* Egyptology has shifted from studying religion and burial to society and settlements, allowing an increased understanding of homes, race, women and sexuality.
* Immigrants used to be seen as a pre-requisite for cultural change (e.g. takeover wars), but it's now apparent that smaller scale social changes slowly caused the big changes.
* It's very difficult to distinguish between the fictional and non-fictional accounts.
March 25, 2011
Ian Shaw provides an overview of Egyptian civilization by way of a single proto-Dynastic antiquity called the Narmer Palette. Especially interesting for this reader was his emphasis on the way in which our perception of Pharonic Egypt is skewed because of the almost random traces left behind by that civilization. He suggests that it was not necessarily a death-focused culture, as our modern day view has it, but one very much involved in life and the perpetuation of the state. How else could it have lasted 3600 years? There can be no systematic approach in a book so short, but it was enjoyable getting Shaw's "roundup," if you will, on a number of issues, including changing methods of excavation, various points of scholarly disagreement today, what we can and cannot know about Egypt by virtue of limitations inherent in the archaeological record, and--most amusingly--the impact of Ancient Egypt on present-day culture. Shaw's style is straightforward. Instead of a Further Reading section there is a handy list of relevant websites.
December 9, 2017
It isn't really about ancient Egypt, rather it's about the research concerning ancient Egypt ("Egyptology") and the main researchers. A misleading title in my view.
June 29, 2020
A historiography rather than a history (its a good historiography, but not what I was looking for nor is it consistent with the other books in this series).
February 10, 2024
I have had an interest in Ancient Egypt ever since I was a child visiting my local museum and there being a Egyptian travelling exhibition, so when I got this book for Christmas I was excited to get to reading.
However, this wasn't what I was expecting. I was expecting an overview of each of the time periods of Egypt - potentially a deep dive (or as deep can be into specific topics such as writing and religion). Essentially a short history of Ancient Egypt. However, what this seems to focus on more is the archeology and the changes in the study of Egyptology as our understanding has increased.
It was disappointing in that sense and I wanted to understand more about the Gods, the Pharaohs etc.
Further, as a "VSI" the author spends a lot of time referring to the Namer palette (an ancient artifact) which got grating quickly as I wanted to learn more about Ancient Egypt and less about a specific palette.
Overall, I learnt a lot more about Egyptology as an area of study - as ssuch I agree with the other reviews this book is mis-titled.
However, this wasn't what I was expecting. I was expecting an overview of each of the time periods of Egypt - potentially a deep dive (or as deep can be into specific topics such as writing and religion). Essentially a short history of Ancient Egypt. However, what this seems to focus on more is the archeology and the changes in the study of Egyptology as our understanding has increased.
It was disappointing in that sense and I wanted to understand more about the Gods, the Pharaohs etc.
Further, as a "VSI" the author spends a lot of time referring to the Namer palette (an ancient artifact) which got grating quickly as I wanted to learn more about Ancient Egypt and less about a specific palette.
Overall, I learnt a lot more about Egyptology as an area of study - as ssuch I agree with the other reviews this book is mis-titled.
January 29, 2023
How do you reconstruct the history, the cultural and socio-economic image of a civilization that left behind one huge, scattered graveyard? Because that’s what the pyramids, temples and other remains from the ancient Egypt are. This book explains clearly the challenge of reconstructing a fragmented history, the evolution of previous and current thought, of how the scenes depicted on tombs do not necessarily depict historical facts, but rather a romantic and personal interpretation of the person’s life and soul’s journey to the afterlife. What is preserved are also only clues about a small group - the kings and queens and the elite. And finally, that interpretation lies in the eye of the interpreter. However, information may still be extracted carefully bit by bit from various sources. What is known for sure, is that the future will most likely challenge and polish our current knowledge about ancient Egypt.
May 22, 2024
As other reviewers mention (at length) this is not an introduction to Ancient Egypt, as the title suggests, but an introduction to Egyptology. When I realized that, I almost returned the book to the library. But I decided it was short enough to just press ahead, and I'm glad I did. The author's sincerity and devotion to his field shows on every page, and there's enough dry humor sprinkled throughout to keep otherwise niche topics from becoming boring.
I suspect The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt will fulfill my desire for an introduction to Ancient Egypt.
I suspect The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt will fulfill my desire for an introduction to Ancient Egypt.
September 18, 2023
This book wasn’t what I was expecting. I was looking for a quick condensed historical survey of ancient Egypt, but this text is more like an anthropological examination of what ancient Egypt has meant to non-Egyptian people ever since they started writing about it. There is an element of that which is interesting to me, but much of this book was not useful for my purposes. I was hoping for a breakdown of ancient Egypt’s society, religion, political history, etc. Oh well. I’ll have to look elsewhere.
January 2, 2018
This is a delightfully readable as well as a deeply erudite book. It provides both a very useful thematic survey of the history of ancient Egypt (from the prehistoric period to beyond Alexander) and a trenchant, up-to-date, gleefully myth-busting survey of the history of Egyptology.
January 12, 2026
Covered a lot of interesting themes and ideas. But I feel like its main focus was Egyptology and its history rather than focusing on the archaeology and other surviving evidence. It was still an interesting read and was informative.
April 17, 2022
Sekadar rujukan bagi menjayakan projek M
September 25, 2023
More of a history of Egyptology rather than the society and culture of Ancient Egypt. The author does haphazardly select a few pharaohs to discuss somewhat more deeply.
Read
February 13, 2022Ancient Egypt was a unique civilization that will no doubt continue to inspire awe and fascination for generations to come. In many respects, Ancient Egyptians were just like us. They sought to acquire and maintain power, they feared death and looked for ways to escape it, and they struggled with the same philosophical questions with which we grapple. But the solutions they came up with – death cults, mummification, and the celebration of the phallus – are so idiosyncratic, so foreign to our view of the world, that it’s easy to imagine Ancient Egypt as an unreal and otherworldly place. Whether we recognize ourselves in the Egyptians or we find them totally alien, we’ll never truly know what it was like to be an Egyptian. We will only ever be outsiders looking in.
---
Ancient Egypt was a civilization in Northeast Africa that lasted for thousands of years.
In 1898, two British Egyptologists, James Quibell and Frederick Green, discovered something that would change our understanding of Ancient Egypt forever.
In the ruins of a six-thousand-year-old temple, they unearthed an artifact that we now call the Narmer Palette, a two-sided slab of stone teeming with images. It’s notable for being one of the earliest examples of hieroglyphic writing that we have.
The front of the Palette depicts two lions with long, intertwined necks. This image is thought to represent the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt – a common theme in Egyptian art. Above the lions stands a king. He appears to be reviewing the decapitated and castrated bodies of his enemies.
On the flip side of the stone is a much larger image of the king, identified as Narmer. Here, he’s shown holding a captive by the hair. Narmer is about to strike the man with a pear-shaped mace.
The Narmer palette is so rich in information that it’s treated by Egyptologists as a prism for Ancient Egyptian culture as a whole. It’s proof that key elements of this culture began to emerge as early as the fourth millennium BC.
The key message here is: Ancient Egypt was a civilization in Northeast Africa that lasted for thousands of years.
We’ll focus on the so-called pharaonic period of Ancient Egypt. It spanned three millennia, from around 3100 BC all the way to the year 332 BC. This period was, perhaps, the zenith of that civilization. But the history of Egypt reaches much farther back.
Early hominids – our common ancestors – were already living in Northeast Africa 400,000 years ago. We know this from the discovery of stone tools in the eastern Sahara desert. But the earliest actual human remains we have are from 55,000 years ago.
Those humans led predominantly nomadic lifestyles. Permanent settlements did not appear until about 6000 BC, when Egypt’s climate began to get wetter. These settlements lined the Nile River, and, from around 4000 BC onward, a sophisticated culture began to emerge.
Rain was – and still is – infrequent throughout Egypt. So, to grow crops, residents of those ancient villages depended on the annual flooding of the Nile. Floodwaters nourished the riverbanks by depositing layers of fertile silt. The Nile is undoubtedly the single most important geographical factor in the development of Egyptian society.
The arid climate, combined with the Egyptians' penchant for elaborate funerary arrangements, has preserved a wealth of artifacts, such as tombs, temples, and inscriptions.
From them, we’ve been able to piece together the story of this fascinating nation.
---
The cult of Osiris promoted elaborate funerary practices to ensure entrance into the afterlife.
A cliché about the Egyptians is that they were gloomy people obsessed with death. In truth, the evidence suggests that Egyptians were actually quite fond of life. Many Egyptian tombs contain joyful scenes, with people making wine, playing music, dancing, feasting – in other words, having fun.
So why do we associate the Egyptians with death? Well, it’s probably because most of our archaeological evidence comes from their well-preserved tombs. Remnants of their other activities are much rarer.
Still, it’s not entirely wrong to think that Egyptians spent more time thinking about death than we modern folk might consider healthy. Nowhere is this seen more clearly than among the followers of the cult of Osiris.
Here’s the key message: The cult of Osiris promoted elaborate funerary practices to ensure entrance into the afterlife.
Osiris was the god of death and resurrection, and he was one of the oldest members of the Egyptian pantheon.
He hadn’t always been a god, though. According to myth, Osiris started life as a king. But he got himself into trouble by committing adultery with the wife of his evil brother, Seth. Seth became understandably enraged and killed Osiris.
The king’s body was dismembered, and its pieces scattered throughout Egypt. Later, Osiris’s wife, Isis, recovered the pieces and reassembled them. The result was the very first mummy.
The cult of Osiris provided a mythological foundation for the practice of mummification. Preserving the body after death was considered essential. Egyptians believed that the spirit needed a physical body to reach the afterlife.
How did mummification actually work? Luckily, we have a contemporaneous description of this process, and it comes from the ancient Greek historian Herodotus.
According to his account, it took two people to mummify a body. One was called the “slitter” and the other the “pickler.” The slitter’s job was to cut open the body and remove internal organs. The pickler collected and dried the organs, packed them into jars, and then wrapped them all up with the rest of the body.
The result was a mummy, a human package that – as we now know – could survive for millennia.
Assuming the slitters and picklers did a good job of wrapping you up, what did you have to look forward to in the afterlife?
Accounts differ, but in one scenario, humans are said to be transformed into stars. Other people seemed to believe that the afterlife was not much different from what we’re all used to – except it happened in another world, called the field of reeds.
---
The pyramids have been a focal point of wild speculation for centuries.
For better or for worse, Ancient Egypt isn’t the sole preserve of academics – it very much belongs to popular culture. As a result, there are a lot of alternative interpretations of Egypt floating around out there.
These alternative Egypts have been created by journalists, film producers, advertising executives, and, of course, conspiracy theorists. At this point, the popular perception of ancient Egypt is just a mishmash of mummy mysteries, Hollywood blockbusters, and Halloween costumes.
Among all this fiction are a few real artifacts that have become iconic, such as the bust of Nefertiti. But even they have been severed from their original context and now float in a postmodern vacuum, open to every interpretation imaginable.
So far, these have been firmly based on evidence. But, to end our story, let’s put reason and evidence aside for once, and indulge some of the more colorful theories about Ancient Egypt.
The key message here is: The pyramids have been a focal point of wild speculation for centuries.
For many wannabe Egyptologists, there’s really only one topic worth talking about – the pyramids. How were they built? What were they for? Why do they look the way they do?
Some theories about the pyramids are probably the most unhinged of all the conjectures about Ancient Egypt. They range from the somewhat plausible to the completely out-of-this-world.
For centuries, they had a biblical flavor. In the fifth century AD, the Roman author Julius Honorius suggested the pyramids were ancient granaries that belonged to none other than the biblical Joseph, the man in whose family Jesus grew up. During the Middle Ages, Arab scholars suggested that Egyptians may have erected the pyramids to protect their scientific knowledge from the ravages of Noah’s flood.
And in modern times, some believe the pyramids were built by a mysterious super-advanced civilization that – allegedly – predated the Egyptians. And, yes, there are even people who point to the potential involvement of aliens from outer space.
Of course, these are just fantasies. Not only are these theories plain wrong, they are also actually quite sinister. They are emblematic of the rather racist tendency to assume that an African people couldn’t possibly have created such a sophisticated civilization.
The most straightforward interpretation is that it was the Egyptians who built the pyramids. And the buildings’ unique shape was probably chosen simply because it is the most structurally sound way of creating a monument that’s both tall and long-lasting.
Of course, for some people, the most straightforward answers just aren’t sufficiently satisfying. So, even while mainstream Egyptology is constantly making headway in bringing Ancient Egypt into the realm of fact, there will always be people who’d rather keep it in the realm of fantasy.
---
Ancient Egypt was a civilization in Northeast Africa that lasted for thousands of years.
In 1898, two British Egyptologists, James Quibell and Frederick Green, discovered something that would change our understanding of Ancient Egypt forever.
In the ruins of a six-thousand-year-old temple, they unearthed an artifact that we now call the Narmer Palette, a two-sided slab of stone teeming with images. It’s notable for being one of the earliest examples of hieroglyphic writing that we have.
The front of the Palette depicts two lions with long, intertwined necks. This image is thought to represent the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt – a common theme in Egyptian art. Above the lions stands a king. He appears to be reviewing the decapitated and castrated bodies of his enemies.
On the flip side of the stone is a much larger image of the king, identified as Narmer. Here, he’s shown holding a captive by the hair. Narmer is about to strike the man with a pear-shaped mace.
The Narmer palette is so rich in information that it’s treated by Egyptologists as a prism for Ancient Egyptian culture as a whole. It’s proof that key elements of this culture began to emerge as early as the fourth millennium BC.
The key message here is: Ancient Egypt was a civilization in Northeast Africa that lasted for thousands of years.
We’ll focus on the so-called pharaonic period of Ancient Egypt. It spanned three millennia, from around 3100 BC all the way to the year 332 BC. This period was, perhaps, the zenith of that civilization. But the history of Egypt reaches much farther back.
Early hominids – our common ancestors – were already living in Northeast Africa 400,000 years ago. We know this from the discovery of stone tools in the eastern Sahara desert. But the earliest actual human remains we have are from 55,000 years ago.
Those humans led predominantly nomadic lifestyles. Permanent settlements did not appear until about 6000 BC, when Egypt’s climate began to get wetter. These settlements lined the Nile River, and, from around 4000 BC onward, a sophisticated culture began to emerge.
Rain was – and still is – infrequent throughout Egypt. So, to grow crops, residents of those ancient villages depended on the annual flooding of the Nile. Floodwaters nourished the riverbanks by depositing layers of fertile silt. The Nile is undoubtedly the single most important geographical factor in the development of Egyptian society.
The arid climate, combined with the Egyptians' penchant for elaborate funerary arrangements, has preserved a wealth of artifacts, such as tombs, temples, and inscriptions.
From them, we’ve been able to piece together the story of this fascinating nation.
---
The cult of Osiris promoted elaborate funerary practices to ensure entrance into the afterlife.
A cliché about the Egyptians is that they were gloomy people obsessed with death. In truth, the evidence suggests that Egyptians were actually quite fond of life. Many Egyptian tombs contain joyful scenes, with people making wine, playing music, dancing, feasting – in other words, having fun.
So why do we associate the Egyptians with death? Well, it’s probably because most of our archaeological evidence comes from their well-preserved tombs. Remnants of their other activities are much rarer.
Still, it’s not entirely wrong to think that Egyptians spent more time thinking about death than we modern folk might consider healthy. Nowhere is this seen more clearly than among the followers of the cult of Osiris.
Here’s the key message: The cult of Osiris promoted elaborate funerary practices to ensure entrance into the afterlife.
Osiris was the god of death and resurrection, and he was one of the oldest members of the Egyptian pantheon.
He hadn’t always been a god, though. According to myth, Osiris started life as a king. But he got himself into trouble by committing adultery with the wife of his evil brother, Seth. Seth became understandably enraged and killed Osiris.
The king’s body was dismembered, and its pieces scattered throughout Egypt. Later, Osiris’s wife, Isis, recovered the pieces and reassembled them. The result was the very first mummy.
The cult of Osiris provided a mythological foundation for the practice of mummification. Preserving the body after death was considered essential. Egyptians believed that the spirit needed a physical body to reach the afterlife.
How did mummification actually work? Luckily, we have a contemporaneous description of this process, and it comes from the ancient Greek historian Herodotus.
According to his account, it took two people to mummify a body. One was called the “slitter” and the other the “pickler.” The slitter’s job was to cut open the body and remove internal organs. The pickler collected and dried the organs, packed them into jars, and then wrapped them all up with the rest of the body.
The result was a mummy, a human package that – as we now know – could survive for millennia.
Assuming the slitters and picklers did a good job of wrapping you up, what did you have to look forward to in the afterlife?
Accounts differ, but in one scenario, humans are said to be transformed into stars. Other people seemed to believe that the afterlife was not much different from what we’re all used to – except it happened in another world, called the field of reeds.
---
The pyramids have been a focal point of wild speculation for centuries.
For better or for worse, Ancient Egypt isn’t the sole preserve of academics – it very much belongs to popular culture. As a result, there are a lot of alternative interpretations of Egypt floating around out there.
These alternative Egypts have been created by journalists, film producers, advertising executives, and, of course, conspiracy theorists. At this point, the popular perception of ancient Egypt is just a mishmash of mummy mysteries, Hollywood blockbusters, and Halloween costumes.
Among all this fiction are a few real artifacts that have become iconic, such as the bust of Nefertiti. But even they have been severed from their original context and now float in a postmodern vacuum, open to every interpretation imaginable.
So far, these have been firmly based on evidence. But, to end our story, let’s put reason and evidence aside for once, and indulge some of the more colorful theories about Ancient Egypt.
The key message here is: The pyramids have been a focal point of wild speculation for centuries.
For many wannabe Egyptologists, there’s really only one topic worth talking about – the pyramids. How were they built? What were they for? Why do they look the way they do?
Some theories about the pyramids are probably the most unhinged of all the conjectures about Ancient Egypt. They range from the somewhat plausible to the completely out-of-this-world.
For centuries, they had a biblical flavor. In the fifth century AD, the Roman author Julius Honorius suggested the pyramids were ancient granaries that belonged to none other than the biblical Joseph, the man in whose family Jesus grew up. During the Middle Ages, Arab scholars suggested that Egyptians may have erected the pyramids to protect their scientific knowledge from the ravages of Noah’s flood.
And in modern times, some believe the pyramids were built by a mysterious super-advanced civilization that – allegedly – predated the Egyptians. And, yes, there are even people who point to the potential involvement of aliens from outer space.
Of course, these are just fantasies. Not only are these theories plain wrong, they are also actually quite sinister. They are emblematic of the rather racist tendency to assume that an African people couldn’t possibly have created such a sophisticated civilization.
The most straightforward interpretation is that it was the Egyptians who built the pyramids. And the buildings’ unique shape was probably chosen simply because it is the most structurally sound way of creating a monument that’s both tall and long-lasting.
Of course, for some people, the most straightforward answers just aren’t sufficiently satisfying. So, even while mainstream Egyptology is constantly making headway in bringing Ancient Egypt into the realm of fact, there will always be people who’d rather keep it in the realm of fantasy.
December 20, 2022
This book is not about ancient Egypt. It’s about white Egyptologists and the evolution of Egyptology. Really disappointing.
November 3, 2015
It's been a few years since I've read any specifically Egyptian history, so picking this one up over a few hours was a great refresher for my brain to make sure none of the information I already had in there had dissolved or shaken itself lose. I did get a distinct feeling during reading this though. That was that if this really was someone's "introduction" to Ancient Egypt then they'd just have had so much information thrown at them that they would most likely get lost and absorb none of it. This read more like a good quick review of general Egyptian history than an introduction, so for me it was perfect.
May 3, 2024
A very short introduction to why you're wrong to want a book on Ancient Egypt that covers historical trends and great individuals, cultural and mythological impacts, and everyday science and technology of a civilization that managed to build objects of such power and permanence that any compelling theory to explain them necessitates an alien ex machina. No, what you really want is a list of Egyptologists, an elaborate explanation on how 2 of the million things we might know are both wrong, and a refusal to state, much less elaborate on, anything we actually do know.
January 3, 2025
The book was extremely disappointing. It told me almost nothing about ancient Egypt. Almost the entire book was about Egyptology. If you have questions such as ‘how do we know what the Egyptians did?’ Or ‘why are there competing interpretations of ancient Egypt?’ Then this is the book for you. If you want a nice simple story of what happened (which I did), or even want to know who the ancient Egyptians were, what their culture was like, or how was society structured, this is most definitely not. Terrible book.
March 22, 2019
While quite an interesting book the title is somewhat misleading. The topic is really Egyptology as a developing comparative science. Those facts that we do learn about Egypt tend to arrive within discussions about things like the difficulties of marrying textual evidence to monumental architecture.
That said, I still enjoyed it.
That said, I still enjoyed it.
August 30, 2019
Like a lot of the VSI series, this seems to have had a somewhat misleading title. More a broad survey of Egyptology than ancient Egypt itself, or anything like a history text. That said, written very lucidly and good for beginners such as myself. A lot of fun. Recommended.
April 21, 2025
This entry in Oxford's 'Very Short Introduction' series does a serviceable job in dealing with a very big subject in a relatively short amount of space. Like many of these guides, it is well illustrated with a good list for further reading and ancillary material.
Why it is interesting is in its tough honesty about how little we know of how ancient Egyptians structured their lives and thought despite the vast amounts of data that will, perhaps, reveal more when artificial intelligence can be applied to its analysis.
The problem is that both archaeological and even textual data may seem large but it is only a small portion of over 3,000 years of history and heavily skewed to certain contexts - chief of which are obviously funerary contexts but increasingly settlement patterns.
Shaw's honesty allows him to explore critically the way that Egyptology has invented (not always without reason in many cases) an Egypt that relects some contemporary reality. Stripping away these layers does not solve the problem that there may not be much of a 'there' there.
This is not to say that a lot has not been discovered but only that caution is required in interpreting it. He is certainly 'brave' in removing two awkward accretions that are unhelpful - the desire to link Egypt to Biblical Studies and the Afrocentrist nonsense that would have Egypt as a 'black' civilisation.
In fact, race was probably not a great issue to Egyptians. Elsewhere we discover that African genes did enter into the population slowly and increasingly over time but were never a majority and certainly the inbreeding Greek Ptolemaic elite (including Cleopatra) was thoroughly European in origin.
There are some weaknesses to the book. The first is that building his narrative on the Narmer Palette in order to try and hold things together might have seemed like a good organisational idea at the time but it does not hold the narrative well as it unfolds. It eventually becomes forced.
The second is an embarrassing slight defensiveness about facing off various absurdities. He is too kind in tone to Afrocentrism and Pyramidology although he does show their absurdity but you can tell a professional anxiety about not going to far down the road of alienating the politically correct.
The book was published in 2004 just as left-liberalism was moving into place as hegemonic in the universities (a place it may be rapidly losing after the Trump Revolution). He would not be alone in bearing in mind that the practice of a profession required some caution in stating positions.
Finally, because he wants to show how Ancient Egypt has been used to meet contemporary needs at different stages, he fails to use the space provided to explain more of the civilisation but drifts instead into a cultural history that is still treated rather cursorily - for reasons of space.
It would have been far better to have encouraged Oxford to produce another book on the 'influence of Ancient Egypt' or as a more significant section of a book on 'Orientalism' than neglect to explain more of what we might know or surmise about Egyptian social structures and philosophy.
One gap is explaining the process by which the five-fold nature of the individual disintegrates and then reintegrates in the 'other world' or underworld. Similarly, the question of popular enslavement and free labour and of grain management and irrigation are left more open that we might like.
Of course, not everything can be covered in a book like this. There is a separate Very Short Introduction on Egyptian Myth but this book seemed unable to decide whether its remit was the story of Ancient Egypt or the story of Egyptology.
Having said this, the book is still useful and even thought-provoking not only in triggering questions about reasonable scepticism not only in archaeology but in historical literary studies and history but in making the reader interested in the subject and wanting to know more.
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