The Ancient Egyptian State: The Origins of Egyptian Culture (c. 8000-2000 BC) (Case Studies in Early Societies) Review

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(More customer reviews)I REALLY enjoyed this book and learned a lot from it. This book is very well-written, and I liked the almost conversational tone taken by the author. The text provides a lot of relevant and recent hard data about the Egyptian past, but these sections of the text are nicely broken up with "boxes," which focus on small interesting topics (including the snakes of Egypt, the experience of living in Egyptian rural communities, Herodotus, etc.). Although the introduction states the book is intended for students in courses such as undergrad or grad comparative civilizations, it is very accessible to the general reader. Throughout the book, Wenke reviews the many attempts to develop a general theory of history and he provides many examples of how such attempts to formulate such a theory have failed. He also describes contemporary attempts to recast archaeology into a science or some other form of general understanding.
The strength of the book is that it integrates a highly detailed review of Egypt's archaeological record during a critical period of cultural change, and yet at the same time it integrates this information with current anthropological theory. Wenke also includes beautifully written essays that help one appreciate the beauty of Egypt's monuments, writing system, and the ancient Egyptians' philosophy, i.e. how they made sense of their world. The sections on how archaeological research is done in the field are very instructive and rarely seen in most introductory books on ancient Egypt.


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