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Egipto: historia de un sentido
En este libro Jan Assmann se pregunta por el marco de condiciones y modelos mentales e intelectuales, religiosos, culturales y políticos del Antiguo Egipto, cuyas huellas, mensajes y recuerdos nos han sido legados en las grandiosas manifestaciones artísticas de aquella cultura que constituyen el el objeto de la historiografía y que nuestro autor describe e interpreta de manera precisa y enriquecedora.
576 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
About the author
Jan Assmann
125 books107 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 - 17 of 17 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.
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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 5, 2026
I purchased this used copy through Amazon from a secondary seller. Printed in 1996, it runs 513 pages cover to cover, or 433 pages before the bibliography, excellent timeline, and index. This is the kind of book that slow readers like myself need to sip one chapter at a time in order to absorb it. With 28 chapters, that gives you some idea of how long it took me to read.
Assmann covers nearly the whole span of Egyptian history, but he does so with a particular eye toward religion and Egyptian ways of thinking as expressed in their writings and monuments across roughly 5,000 years. He begins with the Zero Dynasty, moves through the pharaonic periods, and ends with reflections on how ancient Egypt has been understood in the recent past, nearly up to our own present.
The book is well worth its five-star rating, but I also want to point out what is not there. I almost lowered the rating over these omissions; after flipping back through the book, however, I concluded that Assmann saw the issue but chose not to address it. The likely reason, in my view, is that the subject remains taboo.
My central reservation is not that Assmann’s book is weak; it is that some of the most revealing religious texts and images are left outside the discussion. For a book about Egyptian memory, religion, and meaning, those omissions matter because they touch the very themes the book handles best.
Imagine a book centered on religion that does not discuss what is often acclaimed as the world’s first written religious representation: the Pyramid Texts. They receive not a whiff of mention. Also missing is The Book of the Heavenly Cow, also known as The Destruction of Mankind, which reads like an Egyptian counterpart to Noah’s Flood story or the Babylonian flood tradition. This omission reminds me of Sir James G. Frazer giving ancient African flood traditions only one page and saying there were none, even though his subject was biblical and mythical flood stories. Apparently that subject was taboo for him too. Although the Heavenly Cow is a New Kingdom text found in the tombs of Tutankhamun, Seti I, Ramesses II, Ramesses III, and Ramesses VI, the background of the Pyramid Texts leans heavily on it. Also absent is the Late Kingdom text The Mysterious Faiyum, a work that bookends Egypt’s history from the primordial world through the Greek and Roman periods in an enigmatic way and also reflects The Book of the Heavenly Cow. Finally, Assmann does not discuss the Dendera Zodiac at Hathor’s temple in Dendera, another Late Kingdom representation of Egypt’s ancient past from the primordial era up to the Late Kingdom. Its zodiacal imagery and its depictions of Neheh and Djet time would have made strong examples of Djet, perfected time, becoming a permanent part of Egyptian memory, which is exactly what Assmann’s book is about. The same image also reflects The Book of the Heavenly Cow through Neheh time: eight Heh gods hold up the cosmos, four Merets sing its praise, and the decans circle around perfected time shown as icons of ancient Egypt that the Late Kingdom had still not forgotten.
The subject of Unas is one that Egyptology does not level with us about. Scholars tend to avoid any discussion of the Flood Hymn, treating it as though it were only ascension, solar, and celestial language. It is not just that. Read Assmann’s second-to-last chapter, on re-membering Osiris: it deals with the enigmatic language Egyptians began to employ in the Late Period and possibly earlier. The Book of the Heavenly Cow, The Mysterious Book of the Faiyum, and the Dendera Zodiac all have a relationship to Unas, and Assmann does not cover any of it. I kept the five-star rating, though, when I turned back to page 150 and found this passage:
"Generally speaking, the crocodile symbolized for the Egyptians the character traits they most abhorred: greed, aggression, brutality. But on the cosmic plane it was a sacred animal. The crocodile god Sobek is anything but an antigod, and the same applies incidentally to the goddess in lioness form, Sekhmet."
So he knew and said nothing, because Egyptology keeps the subject taboo. Sobek is important in The Book of the Faiyum and appears in the Pyramid Texts almost from the beginning, at Utterance 317 if you read the only translation that starts at the entrance, Piankoff’s. Sekhmet, likewise, plays a prominent role in The Book of the Heavenly Cow and appears more than once in the Pyramid Texts. Assmann knew. You will also find these icons in the central area of the Dendera Zodiac; once you begin identifying them, the most central figures appear to be related to the Faiyum, beginning in the very center with the Faiyum whale or Apophis. Take your pick: neither is wrong.
There is another aspect that Assmann does not cover: the difference between Amun in the Old Kingdom and earlier, and his aspect in the New Kingdom and beyond. In the Pyramid Texts, Amun is “the Hidden One,” but this hiddenness is darker than the New Kingdom idea in which he is a solar deity whose hidden nature comes from the brightness of the sun. How do we know Amun is the Hidden One? Because he names his son Khonsu in the Cannibal Hymn: to know the son is to know the father. Additionally, William van den Dungen points out that Amun is named in the lesser Pyramid Texts of other kings and queens who had texts written for their pyramids in the Sixth Dynasty. I have not checked that for myself, but Wil van den Dungen belongs in the same class as Assmann. However, he is another scholar who will not talk about what I am saying, even though, like Piankoff, he also points to The Book of the Heavenly Cow in connection with the Pyramid Texts but will not square the circle. Why? Taboo.
There is another point Assmann does not square with us, or perhaps one he did not understand. It appears when he discusses the Shabaka Stone and the Memphite theology reintroduced under Kushite rule, where he describes the cosmic scaffolding that operates the world. He centers that operating principle on the “heart.” I do not think that is right; I think it is something else. You can look across history and see it. It is not bad; it is simply what is. Regardless, Ma'at still has to be reckoned with and the idea of Heart as the operating principle will take Will. The Kushites apparently had both the Heart and the Will, because they respected Ma'at. What about us?
Assmann covers nearly the whole span of Egyptian history, but he does so with a particular eye toward religion and Egyptian ways of thinking as expressed in their writings and monuments across roughly 5,000 years. He begins with the Zero Dynasty, moves through the pharaonic periods, and ends with reflections on how ancient Egypt has been understood in the recent past, nearly up to our own present.
The book is well worth its five-star rating, but I also want to point out what is not there. I almost lowered the rating over these omissions; after flipping back through the book, however, I concluded that Assmann saw the issue but chose not to address it. The likely reason, in my view, is that the subject remains taboo.
My central reservation is not that Assmann’s book is weak; it is that some of the most revealing religious texts and images are left outside the discussion. For a book about Egyptian memory, religion, and meaning, those omissions matter because they touch the very themes the book handles best.
Imagine a book centered on religion that does not discuss what is often acclaimed as the world’s first written religious representation: the Pyramid Texts. They receive not a whiff of mention. Also missing is The Book of the Heavenly Cow, also known as The Destruction of Mankind, which reads like an Egyptian counterpart to Noah’s Flood story or the Babylonian flood tradition. This omission reminds me of Sir James G. Frazer giving ancient African flood traditions only one page and saying there were none, even though his subject was biblical and mythical flood stories. Apparently that subject was taboo for him too. Although the Heavenly Cow is a New Kingdom text found in the tombs of Tutankhamun, Seti I, Ramesses II, Ramesses III, and Ramesses VI, the background of the Pyramid Texts leans heavily on it. Also absent is the Late Kingdom text The Mysterious Faiyum, a work that bookends Egypt’s history from the primordial world through the Greek and Roman periods in an enigmatic way and also reflects The Book of the Heavenly Cow. Finally, Assmann does not discuss the Dendera Zodiac at Hathor’s temple in Dendera, another Late Kingdom representation of Egypt’s ancient past from the primordial era up to the Late Kingdom. Its zodiacal imagery and its depictions of Neheh and Djet time would have made strong examples of Djet, perfected time, becoming a permanent part of Egyptian memory, which is exactly what Assmann’s book is about. The same image also reflects The Book of the Heavenly Cow through Neheh time: eight Heh gods hold up the cosmos, four Merets sing its praise, and the decans circle around perfected time shown as icons of ancient Egypt that the Late Kingdom had still not forgotten.
The subject of Unas is one that Egyptology does not level with us about. Scholars tend to avoid any discussion of the Flood Hymn, treating it as though it were only ascension, solar, and celestial language. It is not just that. Read Assmann’s second-to-last chapter, on re-membering Osiris: it deals with the enigmatic language Egyptians began to employ in the Late Period and possibly earlier. The Book of the Heavenly Cow, The Mysterious Book of the Faiyum, and the Dendera Zodiac all have a relationship to Unas, and Assmann does not cover any of it. I kept the five-star rating, though, when I turned back to page 150 and found this passage:
"Generally speaking, the crocodile symbolized for the Egyptians the character traits they most abhorred: greed, aggression, brutality. But on the cosmic plane it was a sacred animal. The crocodile god Sobek is anything but an antigod, and the same applies incidentally to the goddess in lioness form, Sekhmet."
So he knew and said nothing, because Egyptology keeps the subject taboo. Sobek is important in The Book of the Faiyum and appears in the Pyramid Texts almost from the beginning, at Utterance 317 if you read the only translation that starts at the entrance, Piankoff’s. Sekhmet, likewise, plays a prominent role in The Book of the Heavenly Cow and appears more than once in the Pyramid Texts. Assmann knew. You will also find these icons in the central area of the Dendera Zodiac; once you begin identifying them, the most central figures appear to be related to the Faiyum, beginning in the very center with the Faiyum whale or Apophis. Take your pick: neither is wrong.
There is another aspect that Assmann does not cover: the difference between Amun in the Old Kingdom and earlier, and his aspect in the New Kingdom and beyond. In the Pyramid Texts, Amun is “the Hidden One,” but this hiddenness is darker than the New Kingdom idea in which he is a solar deity whose hidden nature comes from the brightness of the sun. How do we know Amun is the Hidden One? Because he names his son Khonsu in the Cannibal Hymn: to know the son is to know the father. Additionally, William van den Dungen points out that Amun is named in the lesser Pyramid Texts of other kings and queens who had texts written for their pyramids in the Sixth Dynasty. I have not checked that for myself, but Wil van den Dungen belongs in the same class as Assmann. However, he is another scholar who will not talk about what I am saying, even though, like Piankoff, he also points to The Book of the Heavenly Cow in connection with the Pyramid Texts but will not square the circle. Why? Taboo.
There is another point Assmann does not square with us, or perhaps one he did not understand. It appears when he discusses the Shabaka Stone and the Memphite theology reintroduced under Kushite rule, where he describes the cosmic scaffolding that operates the world. He centers that operating principle on the “heart.” I do not think that is right; I think it is something else. You can look across history and see it. It is not bad; it is simply what is. Regardless, Ma'at still has to be reckoned with and the idea of Heart as the operating principle will take Will. The Kushites apparently had both the Heart and the Will, because they respected Ma'at. What about us?
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.
June 16, 2026
Un libro que merece todas las flores que le tiran. Con un enfoque fresco y novedoso que al estudiar la historia de Egipto desde el sentido le da un sentido a la historia de Egipto. Recorre toda la historia de una civilización milenaria con especial atención a la manera en la que se entendía a sí misma. La sensibilidad para las sutilezas de la ideología es notable, y el análisis de fuentes no deja nada que cuestionar. Lo recomiendo incluso si no se tiene un interés particular en la historia egipcia (como es mi caso), porque la perspectiva historiográfica es así de valiosa.
June 25, 2026
Si te interesa la historia de las mentalidades y la historia de Egipto, este libro te va a parecer una auténtica pasada, eso sí, recomiendo tener conocimientos previos sobre la historia y la cultura del Egipto antiguo para poder disfrutarlo de verdad.
December 19, 2018
A great book.
February 14, 2026
يشرح فيه الشخصية المصرية القديمة وتدينها العملي ونظرتها للغرباء.
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 - 17 of 17 reviews