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The Mind of Egypt: History and Meaning in the Time of the Pharaohs
From one of the world's greatest Egyptologists, an original and brilliant study of the inner life of ancient Egypt
The Mind of Egypt presents an unprecedented account of the mainsprings of Egyptian civilization-the ideals, values, mentalities, belief systems, and aspirations that shaped the first territorial state in human history. Drawing on a range of literary, iconographic, and archaeological sources, renowned historian Jan Assmann reconstructs a world of unparalleled complexity, a culture that, long before others, possessed an extraordinary degree of awareness and self-reflection.
Moving through successive periods of Egyptian civilization, from its beginnings in the fifth millennium b.c.e. until the rise of Christianity 4,500 years later, Assmann traces the crucial roles of the pharaohs, the priests, and the imperial bureaucracy. He explores the ideal relation of man to God and explains monumental architecture and ritual celebrations as expressions of that ideal. Most strikingly, he focuses on the meaningful world of ancient Egypt-the multiple notions of time, the structures of immortality, and the commitment to the principle of social justice and human fellowship.
Widely acclaimed for his cross-disciplinary approach, Assmann has produced a tantalizing study of an ancient civilization, even as he has opened new directions in historical investigation.
The Mind of Egypt presents an unprecedented account of the mainsprings of Egyptian civilization-the ideals, values, mentalities, belief systems, and aspirations that shaped the first territorial state in human history. Drawing on a range of literary, iconographic, and archaeological sources, renowned historian Jan Assmann reconstructs a world of unparalleled complexity, a culture that, long before others, possessed an extraordinary degree of awareness and self-reflection.
Moving through successive periods of Egyptian civilization, from its beginnings in the fifth millennium b.c.e. until the rise of Christianity 4,500 years later, Assmann traces the crucial roles of the pharaohs, the priests, and the imperial bureaucracy. He explores the ideal relation of man to God and explains monumental architecture and ritual celebrations as expressions of that ideal. Most strikingly, he focuses on the meaningful world of ancient Egypt-the multiple notions of time, the structures of immortality, and the commitment to the principle of social justice and human fellowship.
Widely acclaimed for his cross-disciplinary approach, Assmann has produced a tantalizing study of an ancient civilization, even as he has opened new directions in historical investigation.
512 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1996
13 people are currently reading
788 people want to read
About the author
Jan Assmann
123 books101 followersAssmann studied Egyptology and classical archaeology in Munich, Heidelberg, Paris, and Göttingen. In 1966-67, he was a fellow of the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo, where he continued as an independent scholar from 1967 to 1971. After completing his habilitation in 1971, he was named a professor of Egyptology at the University of Heidelberg in 1976, where he taught until his retirement in 2003. He was then named an honorary professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Constance, where he is today.
In the 1990s Assmann and his wife Aleida Assmann developed a theory of cultural and communicative memory that has received much international attention. He is also known beyond Egyptology circles for his interpretation of the origins of monotheism, which he considers as a break from earlier cosmotheism, first with Atenism and later with the Exodus from Egypt of the Israelites.
In the 1990s Assmann and his wife Aleida Assmann developed a theory of cultural and communicative memory that has received much international attention. He is also known beyond Egyptology circles for his interpretation of the origins of monotheism, which he considers as a break from earlier cosmotheism, first with Atenism and later with the Exodus from Egypt of the Israelites.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
July 24, 2024
Truly impressive study of the mental history of Ancient Egypt, from the earliest period (approximately 4,000 BCE) to the Greco-Roman period. As you can imagine, the focus is very much on the 'spiritual life', much less on political, economic and material developments, which sometimes gives this book a rather 'high brow' slant. Jan Assmann (1938-2024) was a particularly lucid analyst of texts, and there are plenty of them for Ancient Egypt. He mainly uses inscriptions in tombs and on temple walls to show the constant shifts in the conceptual thinking of the ancient Egyptians. He proceeds quite interpretively, which does entail a risk, especially if he deduces major developments based on a small number of texts. This book is almost 30 years old (the original German edition was published in 1996), and in the meanwhile his insights have regularly been put into perspective and criticized. But that doesn't change the fact that this is by far the most interesting book I have read about Ancient Egypt so far. To me, Assmann was the first to really make tangible how strange and different the Ancient Egyptian view of life and the world was.
More in my History account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
More in my History account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
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October 21, 2024The German historian Jan Assmann (1938-2024) can easily be called the most remarkable Egyptologist of recent decades. His publications between roughly 1990 and 2010 were absolute reference points for both supporters and opponents, and his work is still regularly cited. However, his studies are not the easiest ones: Assmann mainly focused on mental processes and concepts, that he visualized through the study of ancient Egyptian texts. In an interview (that can be found on YouTube), Assmann tells how, in his younger years, he spent months carefully inventorying inscriptions on Egyptian temple walls and in tombs, sometimes in very difficult circumstances, and how the study of those texts for him opened up the mental universe of the Ancient Egyptians.
You can also notice this in this book: Assmann constantly quotes texts, analyzes stories and incantations and distills from them the image with which the Egyptians viewed life (and death), and how this evolved over time (more than 3 millennia!). He doesn’t offer a simple political history, from pharaoh to pharaoh or from dynasty to dynasty, but an in-depth analysis of the spiritual life in ancient Egypt. It’s a bit like Johan Huizinga did for the late Middle Ages. Assmann mainly probes into semantic shifts to detect how ancient Egyptians gave meaning to the universe: “A history of meaning studies the semantic systems that underlie historical processes and that achieve tangible form in traces, messages, and memories; such constellations of meaning are themselves the definitive markers of epochs.”
This certainly provides surprising insights, such as about the revolutionary character of Akhenaten's sun disk cult: “The revelation offered by Akhenaten consists not in moral laws and historical action but in the conviction that everything-visible and invisible reality in its entirety-is a product of light and time, and hence of the sun. Akhenaten believed that he had discovered the one divine principle from which the world had initially originated and originated anew every day. And as this unique principle was the source of all others, it followed that there could be no other gods but this one. This was no question of "loyalty" or "jealousy," as in early biblical henotheism, but of knowledge and truth; Akhenaten's vision was a cognitive breakthrough. As a thinker, Akhenaten stands at the head of a line of inquiry that was taken up seven hundred years later by the Milesian philosophers of nature with their search for the one all-informing principle, and that ended with the universalist formulas of our own age as embodied in the physics of Einstein and Heisenberg.”
However, Assmann's approach also has a number of disadvantages. His focus on mental processes regularly produces examples of abstract semantic fireworks. Take this sentence: “the idea of a connective justice that binds individuals into a community and their actions into the meaningful ensemble of a history is central to Egyptian civilization throughout its entire span.” Assmann surely explains what he means by this, but it requires some brain gymnastics from the reader to follow his reasoning. Secondly, he sometimes uses a rather rough brush, deducing far-reaching consequences from small shifts in the way texts are formulated. This entails risks, because ultimately texts are only a small part of the total cultural production, they’re always the product of a tiny elite, and so there is always a chance of distortion.
But don't get me wrong: this book is absolutely impressive. Especially the passages in which Assmann talks about how the Ancient Egyptians sensed temporality and historicity make tangible how differently they viewed reality than we do. And in his treatment of the period around the middle of the 1st millennium BCE, he clearly indicates how at that time the millennia-old knowledge of Ancient Egypt was canonized and therefore subsequently used by other cultures (Persians, Greeks, Romans, etc.) as a almost unattainable, even hermetically whole was approached. Downright fascinating.
You can also notice this in this book: Assmann constantly quotes texts, analyzes stories and incantations and distills from them the image with which the Egyptians viewed life (and death), and how this evolved over time (more than 3 millennia!). He doesn’t offer a simple political history, from pharaoh to pharaoh or from dynasty to dynasty, but an in-depth analysis of the spiritual life in ancient Egypt. It’s a bit like Johan Huizinga did for the late Middle Ages. Assmann mainly probes into semantic shifts to detect how ancient Egyptians gave meaning to the universe: “A history of meaning studies the semantic systems that underlie historical processes and that achieve tangible form in traces, messages, and memories; such constellations of meaning are themselves the definitive markers of epochs.”
This certainly provides surprising insights, such as about the revolutionary character of Akhenaten's sun disk cult: “The revelation offered by Akhenaten consists not in moral laws and historical action but in the conviction that everything-visible and invisible reality in its entirety-is a product of light and time, and hence of the sun. Akhenaten believed that he had discovered the one divine principle from which the world had initially originated and originated anew every day. And as this unique principle was the source of all others, it followed that there could be no other gods but this one. This was no question of "loyalty" or "jealousy," as in early biblical henotheism, but of knowledge and truth; Akhenaten's vision was a cognitive breakthrough. As a thinker, Akhenaten stands at the head of a line of inquiry that was taken up seven hundred years later by the Milesian philosophers of nature with their search for the one all-informing principle, and that ended with the universalist formulas of our own age as embodied in the physics of Einstein and Heisenberg.”
However, Assmann's approach also has a number of disadvantages. His focus on mental processes regularly produces examples of abstract semantic fireworks. Take this sentence: “the idea of a connective justice that binds individuals into a community and their actions into the meaningful ensemble of a history is central to Egyptian civilization throughout its entire span.” Assmann surely explains what he means by this, but it requires some brain gymnastics from the reader to follow his reasoning. Secondly, he sometimes uses a rather rough brush, deducing far-reaching consequences from small shifts in the way texts are formulated. This entails risks, because ultimately texts are only a small part of the total cultural production, they’re always the product of a tiny elite, and so there is always a chance of distortion.
But don't get me wrong: this book is absolutely impressive. Especially the passages in which Assmann talks about how the Ancient Egyptians sensed temporality and historicity make tangible how differently they viewed reality than we do. And in his treatment of the period around the middle of the 1st millennium BCE, he clearly indicates how at that time the millennia-old knowledge of Ancient Egypt was canonized and therefore subsequently used by other cultures (Persians, Greeks, Romans, etc.) as a almost unattainable, even hermetically whole was approached. Downright fascinating.
May 26, 2010
This book is basically a history of ancient Egyptian ideology, how the Egyptian elite thought of the world and their place in it. As such it focuses not so much on the archeological traces that the Egyptians left without intending to or on the literal content of the messages that they recorded as on the purposes implicit in their decision to compose each record in the first place. Also because of the subject, the book is full of sweeping, speculative theses that I nevertheless found at least as interesting as more verifiable but also less significant details would be. I particularly liked the long quotations from Egyptian inscriptions, hymns, etc. that Assmann uses to support his points. I don't know if there are more complete English translations of any of them but if so I hope to read some of them someday.
April 12, 2012
Jan Assmann delves beyond Egyptian history into the history of how the Egyptians thought about themselves and viewed the world and their own history. Assmann supports his points with plenty of examples from Egyptian literature and art, and presents a rather convincing case. At times he can get rather into the technical theory side of things, and I must admit during those moments I had problems keeping my eyes open, however for the most part his explanations are surprisingly clear – he takes the time to explain what can sometimes initially seem pretty alien concepts and thought processes, and can present elucidating comparisons and examples to familiar modes of thought – although one of his favourite comparisons was to biblical tradition and ancient Judeo-Christian perspective, and I didn’t always agree with the comparison. Also, upon finishing the book, I felt that Assmann’s final section was too short, cramming in the last 1000 years of pharaonic Egyptian history into a mere 40 pages or so – I definitely felt that the examination of the Late Period and Ptolemaic rule was too brief and didn’t cover enough. Overall however, full of insight and well-executed, though I didn’t agree with Assmann on every single point and wasn’t 100% gripped.
8 out of 10.
8 out of 10.
July 15, 2021
Graças ao incrível trabalho de Memória feito por Jan Assmann esse livro se torna um grande manual de como se compreender a mentalidade coletiva que estrutura uma das sociedades mais complexas do mundo antigo.
De fato, os egípcios são bons para pensar e Jan Assmann mostra isso com maestria.
De fato, os egípcios são bons para pensar e Jan Assmann mostra isso com maestria.
June 10, 2016
Ein Meilenstein der Ägyptologie. Vorkenntnisse der Geschichte sind zwar zwecks Orientierung sinnvoll, aber auch hier gibt Assmann ausreichend Überblick. Mit dieser "Sinngeschichte" bricht das Bild des alten Ägyptens als monolithischer Block unwandelbarer Tradition und legt Schicht um Schicht ihrer Umwandlungen und Brüche dar. Solche Bücher sind der Kern der Geschichtsschreibung, schade, dass sie dabei stets in absoluter Minderheit bleiben werden.
August 28, 2023
Very erudite and wide ranging book about how ancient egyptians thought about things throughout their history. i mostly wanted to read this to get a sense of what the deal was with the amarna period relative to the rest of egyptian history and there is a lot of detail on that, but much of the material about other periods was interesting too.
November 10, 2024
Épica historia de la ideología de las élites egipcias, abarcando desde los periodos predinasticos al sereno crepúsculo grecorromano.
Abordando el desarrollo y variaciones de la metafísica cosmologica, así como su inscripción en arquitectura y artes plásticas, Jan Assman consigue hibridar historia, mito y existencia con el fin decidido de sintetizar la dimensión de sentido del Antiguo Egipto.
La selección de textos, los apuntes historicos y la cuidada presentación del trasunto cultual consiguen elevar las huellas arqueológicas y la sedimentacion de teorías hacia una comprensión conceptual del auge y caída de un modo único de concebir el lugar del hombre en el cosmos.
Abordando el desarrollo y variaciones de la metafísica cosmologica, así como su inscripción en arquitectura y artes plásticas, Jan Assman consigue hibridar historia, mito y existencia con el fin decidido de sintetizar la dimensión de sentido del Antiguo Egipto.
La selección de textos, los apuntes historicos y la cuidada presentación del trasunto cultual consiguen elevar las huellas arqueológicas y la sedimentacion de teorías hacia una comprensión conceptual del auge y caída de un modo único de concebir el lugar del hombre en el cosmos.
December 19, 2018
A great book.
February 12, 2022
It is a great book for anyone learning about ancient Egypt.
lifes-too-short
June 25, 2009Not sure if this is dull in general or if the bits I managed to slog through are just dull because not much of interest happened before the pharaohs--or if it's all just over my head.
September 18, 2015
While it is undoubtedly a scholarly & beautifully-written book (Mr. Assmann's erudtion is irrefutable), it is - nonetheless - not for the faint of heart: it took some time to plod through it.
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June 23, 2018A unique perspective of facts which have historically been described from the top down perspective. The text is rich with detail while staying enjoyable to read, covers many archaeologists, and suggests areas for deeper study.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews