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Great Ages of Man
Ancient Egypt
Learn about Ancient Egypt
192 pages, Hardcover
Published August 1, 1967
6 people are currently reading
191 people want to read
About the author
Lionel Casson
54 books49 followersLionel Casson was a classicist, professor emeritus at New York University, and a specialist in maritime history. He earned his B.A. in 1934 at New York University, and in 1936 became an assistant professor. He later earned his Ph.D. there during 1939. In 2005 he was awarded the Archaeological Institute of America Gold Medal.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
February 20, 2017
When I was just a young kid, I remember reading books from the Time-Life series on Great Civilizations in the city library--- including this one. They're a great overall survey and introduction to learning more about these. This one especially is readable and fascinating with incredible illustrations and photographs of Ancient Egyptian major works and heart. A very enjoyable read --- I recommend it to anyone desiring to gain a better acquaintance with Ancient Egypt and its culture and history.
January 8, 2023
Despite a few lower quality pictures, I really enjoyed this book. It has a nice overview of Ancient Egypt with a few detailed tidbits I didn't know.
September 29, 2015
De niño, este libro solo leía los pies de imágenes. Ahora que lo tenía a la mano, aproveché para leerlo por completo. Es un libro sobre cómo era la vida en el antiguo imperio egipcio, su religión, su cultura, y su obsesión con la eternidad y la vida en el más allá. Está bastante interesante y ameno el texto.
July 20, 2017
I'm really enjoying this series of books. So well written and full of fascinating information....I feel as if I've taken a complete course in Ancient Egypt.
July 19, 2021
Look me in the eye when I say this, look me in the eyeball 👁. You are not getting a 5 star rating without an analysis on how mummification was achieved and I’m concerned that I even need to explain this.
August 7, 2019
For a little preface, I bought this book solely for its cover as I believed it would look nice in a new home library I've been constructing for awhile now. With that being said, after buying the book, I wanted to spend the time scouring through the book to know how up-to-date the information was.
Unfortunately, there is very little separation between fact and speculation in the book. Now, don't get me wrong, this doesn't mean anything is wrong with the book, it just means there is information that is more than misleading as the presented "Facts" were actually just theories presented by Egyptologists that are more than incorrect. I'll give a very big example below.
The book refers to the Sphinx several times in the book. The first time it is introduced, it gives the short back story that the Greeks found the half-buried monument with the head of a man and the body of an animal and referred to it as a "Sphinx" as it matched the fables of Oedipus and his encounter with a creature that was described as having the head of a man and the body of a lion. The book clarifies that this name (Sphinx) is not what the Egyptians would have called it and is "a Greek corruption of the Egyptian's designation". UNFORTUNATELY, the book then continues referring to the Sphinx as having the body of a lion and stating this as continued fact as well as claiming that the original human head was the Egyptian design by a certain pharaoh.
The truth is that the body of the Sphinx is that of a dog (specifically Anubis) and represents the gates to the underworld (of which the pyramids of Giza build upon). Reference to this structure go as far back as when a pharaoh wrote that he would bury his dog at the site of the great Anubis statue outside of the city of Anubis (where the large pyramids now reside) meaning that the pharaoh claiming creation actually just carved down an original Anubis statue and placed his head in its place. This is also why the Sphinx head is disproportionate with the rest of its body. Now, of course, these are amongst new and emerging theories (despite several of these discoveries going back decades). However, if the book did not refuse to the sphinx as the body of a lion ( a claim that uses the greek corruption) then such continued misinformation wouldn't be copied over.
A large portion of the book surrounds factual information however (daily life from recovered artifacts, seasonal changes of the nile, crops, developments, placements of temples and structures along the nile, etc) however, it is very hard to distinguish many of the mythological information from fact or speculation without also holding other books in your possession to confirm or look into (a recommendation would be to own a copy of the Book of the Dead translated by the brilliant Zahi Hawass).
Now, this does not mean that this is a bad book, there is just a lot left to be desired. 80 percent of the information can be taken as is without needed further building or information surrounding it to separate if it's a theory or not. Outside of that, it's a pretty book filled with good historical information, theory and brilliant pictures of incredible quality.
Unfortunately, there is very little separation between fact and speculation in the book. Now, don't get me wrong, this doesn't mean anything is wrong with the book, it just means there is information that is more than misleading as the presented "Facts" were actually just theories presented by Egyptologists that are more than incorrect. I'll give a very big example below.
The book refers to the Sphinx several times in the book. The first time it is introduced, it gives the short back story that the Greeks found the half-buried monument with the head of a man and the body of an animal and referred to it as a "Sphinx" as it matched the fables of Oedipus and his encounter with a creature that was described as having the head of a man and the body of a lion. The book clarifies that this name (Sphinx) is not what the Egyptians would have called it and is "a Greek corruption of the Egyptian's designation". UNFORTUNATELY, the book then continues referring to the Sphinx as having the body of a lion and stating this as continued fact as well as claiming that the original human head was the Egyptian design by a certain pharaoh.
The truth is that the body of the Sphinx is that of a dog (specifically Anubis) and represents the gates to the underworld (of which the pyramids of Giza build upon). Reference to this structure go as far back as when a pharaoh wrote that he would bury his dog at the site of the great Anubis statue outside of the city of Anubis (where the large pyramids now reside) meaning that the pharaoh claiming creation actually just carved down an original Anubis statue and placed his head in its place. This is also why the Sphinx head is disproportionate with the rest of its body. Now, of course, these are amongst new and emerging theories (despite several of these discoveries going back decades). However, if the book did not refuse to the sphinx as the body of a lion ( a claim that uses the greek corruption) then such continued misinformation wouldn't be copied over.
A large portion of the book surrounds factual information however (daily life from recovered artifacts, seasonal changes of the nile, crops, developments, placements of temples and structures along the nile, etc) however, it is very hard to distinguish many of the mythological information from fact or speculation without also holding other books in your possession to confirm or look into (a recommendation would be to own a copy of the Book of the Dead translated by the brilliant Zahi Hawass).
Now, this does not mean that this is a bad book, there is just a lot left to be desired. 80 percent of the information can be taken as is without needed further building or information surrounding it to separate if it's a theory or not. Outside of that, it's a pretty book filled with good historical information, theory and brilliant pictures of incredible quality.
August 8, 2017
Información breve y concisa, las imágenes plausibles (quiero recalcar que el tamaño de las imágenes en cada pagina es el adecuado), te da una clara idea de egipto desde la unificación hasta su decadencia, si sabes de egiptología, dudo que este libro pueda aportarte mucho, pero como un texto introductorio es excelente, sin duda te atrapará y querrás adentrarte mas en el tema.
June 6, 2022
The American-born classicist Lionel Casson’s 1965 edition of the book, Ancient Egypt, is for the series of Time-Life Books’ Great Ages of Man. As a classicist, Casson was one of the pioneers of maritime archaeology as a professor at New York University. Casson’s book is probably dated, but it is still worth reading if one is interested in the historiography of Egyptology. To put the date of the book written in 1965 in perspective, several Ancient Egyptian anthropology sites were rescued from Lake Nassar which was created by the Aswan Dam under the Egyptian President Gamal Nasser. Ancient Egypt is readable. The book has a beautiful layout, and a photo essay follows each chapter. There is a Timeline at the end of the book. They had a section on how to read hieroglyphics, I think it gave a clear understanding of hieroglyphics. I found the section on Ancient Egyptian medicine well-done (Cassman 147-148). Each chapter has images within the text. Even though it was dated I did not regret spending time reading the book, Ancient Egypt. As the Egyptologist, John A. Wilson writes in the introduction to Casson’s Ancient Egypt book, “It is the great merit of Lionel Casson’s treatment that he sees the Egyptians as people who really did live and love and hate and hope and suffer” (Casson 7).
December 22, 2021
Trying to summarize a civilization that spanned 3000 years in a book of less than 200 pages seems an impossible and foolhardy task, and ANCIENT EGYPT, as anyone old enough to remember LIFE magazine will not be surprised to hear, is split almost evenly between text and illustration. Nevertheless, I felt that I learned a lot about Egypt's history, politics, religion, culture, art and science while reading this book. A very good introduction to a complicated subject.
June 6, 2022
I wanted a basic understanding of Egypt, which this book provided. Some parts of it were restated multiple times as if written by different people who hadn't read the others work, but it didn't make it overly terrible.
May 15, 2023
Ancient Egypt has always fascinated me.
February 4, 2025
Fascinating
June 16, 2025
It is almost unthinkable that with a book so short and laden with pictures, I have got to appreciate, albeit how shallowly, the orthography of hieroglyphics, the history of ancient Egypt, and the nuts and bolts into building pyramids that practically did not require nuts and bolts, still achieving unprecedented precision—less than an inch, I am told!
That is why I prefer antique books. They are wise, perfect and clean, not some dodgy camel riding tours that infest the tranquillity surrounding Giza—unnecessary, unbearable and unsightly, similar to modern writing. But when I learned that modern measurement has widened the error range to 20cm, I was reminded of trusting up-to-date sources.
And yet, two points still stand. We all have to start somewhere. Leaving out the chance to learn a few erroneous concepts might prohibit learning anything at all, unless you are ready to face the arcane archaeological textbooks covering 27 centuries.
This was neither written prior to the discovery of the stone slab at Fort Julien that later became known as the Rosetta stone, nor before a Frenchman used it to decipher the script; but just before François Mitterand renounced possession of the obelisk that Egypt gave France 151 years ago as a result of the decoding. I did not miss by miles in reading a book written in 1978. It was a sufficiently satisfactory snapshot of what they had to teach, because the events always kept evolving. We either take a pragmatic pause or wait forever.
I remember reading here that Jean-François Champollion cracked the code despite having never visited the Rosetta stone himself. That is the power of words for you.
That is why I prefer antique books. They are wise, perfect and clean, not some dodgy camel riding tours that infest the tranquillity surrounding Giza—unnecessary, unbearable and unsightly, similar to modern writing. But when I learned that modern measurement has widened the error range to 20cm, I was reminded of trusting up-to-date sources.
And yet, two points still stand. We all have to start somewhere. Leaving out the chance to learn a few erroneous concepts might prohibit learning anything at all, unless you are ready to face the arcane archaeological textbooks covering 27 centuries.
This was neither written prior to the discovery of the stone slab at Fort Julien that later became known as the Rosetta stone, nor before a Frenchman used it to decipher the script; but just before François Mitterand renounced possession of the obelisk that Egypt gave France 151 years ago as a result of the decoding. I did not miss by miles in reading a book written in 1978. It was a sufficiently satisfactory snapshot of what they had to teach, because the events always kept evolving. We either take a pragmatic pause or wait forever.
I remember reading here that Jean-François Champollion cracked the code despite having never visited the Rosetta stone himself. That is the power of words for you.
September 26, 2018
Paging through a year-by-year chronicle of what we know (or think we know) about ancient Egypt might not be everyone's cup of tea, but I enjoyed the experience.
Ancient Egypt
Copiously illustrated, with enough information to interest the enthusiast, without so much that someone new to reading about Egyptian history will get buried.
Ancient Egypt
Copiously illustrated, with enough information to interest the enthusiast, without so much that someone new to reading about Egyptian history will get buried.
January 12, 2011
My paternal grandmother gave this book to me along with the entire Great Ages of Man series as each volume became available. Indeed, she gave me several of the Time-Life series over the years, a practice which helped encourage me as a reader while inspiring interest in a number of fields. The receipt of the books, one-by-one, was a highlight of visits to her home, visits otherwise quite boring given the adult nature of such gatherings. Rather than watch them, I'd head off into a bedroom and read until it was time to go home.
Other than cursory mentions of the Egyptian civilization in primary school texts, this was the first book I ever read on the subject. It's length (192 pages punctuated by beautiful pictures and photos) and its accessible text make it ideal as an introduction to the culture and its history.
I don't believe in the perdurance of the individual personality after death, but at times I do invoke the memory (presence) of Nanny, this beloved grandmother, while bedding down for the night. No other adult had such a profound influence on my intellectual development. No other adult cared for me so effectively. I often think of her, copy her, in my own dealings with children.
Other than cursory mentions of the Egyptian civilization in primary school texts, this was the first book I ever read on the subject. It's length (192 pages punctuated by beautiful pictures and photos) and its accessible text make it ideal as an introduction to the culture and its history.
I don't believe in the perdurance of the individual personality after death, but at times I do invoke the memory (presence) of Nanny, this beloved grandmother, while bedding down for the night. No other adult had such a profound influence on my intellectual development. No other adult cared for me so effectively. I often think of her, copy her, in my own dealings with children.
April 3, 2015
These type books are undoubtedly interesting, but I have always found the format used a bit distracting the way the boxed excerpts interfere with the chapter being read. One must finish reading the chapter before going back to read what is in the boxes, or read through those sections first & then go back to the beginning to read the chapter in full.
February 8, 2015
A nice little book on Ancient Egypt written in 1965 for Time-Life. What I appreciated was the detailed graphics of Karnak Temple, how Champollion deciphered the hieroglyphs, and maps of lower and upper Egypt. A good reference book for the armchair Egyptologist.
July 3, 2010
Another in the great series...enjoy the photos of art and the wonderful tables/charts and maps
June 27, 2014
Great summary.
February 12, 2016
Best book about Ancient Egypt so far.
April 12, 2014
This book was full of information on one of my favorite civilizations in history!
October 15, 2016
Very good study of ancient Egyptian culture, politics, economics, and accomplishments.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews