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(More customer reviews)The title, unconsciously I think, is funny, but Robert Tignor's book about Egypt gets better as it goes along.
"Egypt" is one of the odder histories I have read, addressed to people who want to travel to Egypt, which is a lot of people: Tourism makes up 10% of Egypt's national income (not counting the giant subsidies American taxpayers provide). The assumption is that they might want to know something about the place, but not too much.
The early chapters are a mishmash of a history that, I suppose, most people know at least a little about; that Egypt is the "gift of the Nile, that Pharaoh Ramses II had a big ego and so on. Tignor understates the technological contributions of the ancient Egyptians, mentioning mathematics and a primitive start toward alphabetic writing, but completely ignoring the material contributions. It is hard to imagine modern life without glass, for example.
He also appears to swallow whole the Old Testament stories about Egypt, although archaeology has found no trace of ancient Israelites in the most archaeology-friendly place on earth.
Tignor is an economic historian of modern Egypt, and as the history reaches the area of his lifetime study -- which happens also to be the period where (I conceive) even educated people tend not to know as much as they do about the more exciting era of pyramids, messiahs (even if imaginary) and tombs full of gold -- it becomes more trenchant.
This is also the part of the book where he inserts a bit of travelogue, handy hints for tourists who do go to Egypt.
However, he seems unconscious that the second half of "Egypt" contradicts a major theme of the first part, that, "It is virtually impossible for conquerors to obliterate the culture of the local population." The Muslims did a pretty good job of it.
Charles Singer, the pioneer historian of technology, emphasized how much invention came from Egypt; and Alexandria under the Graecized pharaohs continued the reputation for inquiry that had made Egypt a byword for knowledge in the classical world. No inventions have come out of Egypt since the Arabs took over, and it was almost the last place in the world to get a printing press. (Tignor sometimes elides these things; he remarks approvingly about the Cairene intellectual climate of the late 18th century, talking about "book discussion groups," not mentioning that the books were all manuscript.)
Egypt was, indeed, the intellectual cynosure of the Arab (and to some extent the Turkish Ottoman) world, but compared with the rest of the world, that isn't saying much.
As a person who lived for years in Cairo, Tignor shows great sympathy for the desire of the Egyptians to regain control of their country, not that this has been of much practical value to them. He correctly notes that one tradition going back the full five millenia continues strong: despotic (he uses the milder term authoritarian) rule.
The evident desire of Mubarak to begin a new dynasty makes it difficult to think of Egypt as anything but a failed state in the making. If you are of a mind to visit, it might be a good idea not to put it off.
NOTE: The Amazon star rating system can be problematic, and it is with "Egypt." I have given it three stars, which I think it deserves for anyone picking it up and expecting a short history of Egypt. But if considered as the curious sort of history the author says he intends -- written for a narrowly focused audience -- it could rate four stars.
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