I'm once again departing slightly from tradition with my December review. First, and least importantly, the poor image quality! I forgot my proper camera at work and had to bring this book back to the library, so ended up using my phone in artificial light. I've tried to clean it up some, but … yeah, it's not great. I know.
More importantly, this is a series review, not a book review. I don't feel right saying, "read part three!" when parts one and two are just as good and you'd be missing context without them. Which is sort of weird to be saying about history books, maybe, but there you go.
So, basically, the History of Ancient Egypt books by John Romer are the Egyptian history books to read, especially if you like academic histories, big picture narratives, archaeology, or decolonizing the past. They're detailed but readable, seem comprehensive in terms of sources, and are nearly as concerned with tracing the history of the "common knowledge" about Egypt as they are with describing cultural shifts within ancient Egypt itself and with busting myths.
Yes, "academic" here does mean densely informative. Each book is trying to cover hundreds, if not thousands, of years, after all. However, Romer is keenly aware of that and also aware that he's writing for a lay audience. He's warm, concise, and direct; never wanders off topic or too far down any particular track; provides copious illustrations; chooses his examples for maximum effect; and breaks down facts and misconceptions plainly. There are also anecdotes and other humanizing moments, loving descriptions of artworks, translations of ancient writings, and other moments of bringing the past to light and injecting some lightness. It might be occasionally slow, but it's far more readable than it could be.
Romer is also rigorous, in the way of a good historian. His focus is on what we truly know, what we can glean from Egyptian writings and art and other aspects of material culture, and he's good about pulling back from and pointing out the Western lens at every turn. So, he'll talk about the training and knowledge and labour that lies behind a sculpture or temple, he'll talk about the continuity of form from the Old to Middle to New Kingdoms, and he'll talk about what that says about cultural values and social organization—and then he'll bring up a 19th-century European who looked at that art and saw an ancient Napoleon or slave labour or proto-Christianity, because that European couldn't see outside his own context.
And because of Romer's focus on the archaeology, this ends up, like I said, as a big picture sort of history. There isn't much we can know about a lot of the pharaohs, let alone daily lives of other individuals, because so much time has passed and so much was never recorded. (And trying to build granular history from what's known is, as he points out, fraught, since so much Egyptian writing was formulaic and over-dramatized.) What we get instead is shifts in artistic and architectural techniques, shifts in the location of royal residences and tombs, more art vs. less art, first appearances of formulae that echo down the ages, signs of trade and international connection, and the like. Major pharaohs are mentioned, of course, and their dramatic Westernized personalities, but those also, he pares back. Yes, Akhenaten came up with a new god and apparent monotheism. No, he didn't "dictatorially force it" on the population.
Which is not to say that Romer's perfect in his stance. There have been moments in every volume where I've wondered if he's still making assumptions, or if he's backed up by the research in his bibliography and just not writing down his full reasoning. (At least some of this has to do with art criticism. Does a change in imagery or style really mean what he says it does?) There are also moments when I feel like he could stand to speculate a little more than he does, like the period near the end of this latest volume where the tombs get rushed and the tomb-builders are assigned to different projects. In other places in the books, he comments on how interesting of a shift X is, what X tells us about priorities, what forces might have prompted X—but he doesn't here. He just states facts.
(Is this me putting my own Western bias to work? Or me just wanting to know unknowable things? Entirely possible, on both counts.)
I do definitely, though, applaud Romer's commitment to decolonizing ancient Egyptian history. There has been a lot of speculation, a lot of sloppy and wishful thinking, and a lot of racism/orientalism at play in the last 250 years, after all, and it's lead to an image of Egypt that isn't substantiated. It's not just the great events, either, like Hatshepsut's "usurpation" and the "Great Man" Ramesses II and the "Sea Peoples" who seem to have been, as individual people groups, already living in the area. Romer also points out that you can't have a "market" if you don't have money, you can't have a "marriage" if you don't have weddings, and you can't map 4,000-year-old armed conflicts like you would the Battle of Waterloo (for one thing, the army is a lot smaller, no matter what pharaoh claims). A whole section of Volume 2 addresses the early French and German egyptologists and their motives, part of Volume 3 is dedicated to attempts to pinpoint the people and places of Exodus, and there is much sadness throughout the series at the roles poverty, looting, and tourism have played in the loss of the archaeological record.
So, while the series isn't entirely perfect, as I've mentioned, I find it difficult to imagine anything better, and these books feel much more complete, accurate, and grounded than a lot of the more popular histories I've come across (Egyptian or otherwise). Romer talks about craftspeople at least as much as priests and royals; blends hard dates and names with social history, geography, and historical climate studies; lays out massive amounts of information without being muddy or overwhelming; is committed to pointing out the flaws of the founders of his field; and humanizes his ancient subjects when it's possible to do so. It's masterful and impressive and clearly the result of a life's work. I want more people to read it, Egypt buffs or not. Some of Romer's points about what's knowable have stuck with me since Volume 1, which at this point is a decade ago, and this has become one of those histories I compare others to.
I sadly suspect this is the end of the series, but if it isn't, I'll be excitedly reading Volume 4 as soon as I can get my hands on it!
