Matthews, R. & C. Roemer. Eds. 2003. Ancient perspectives on Egypt. – London, UCL Press (Encounters with ancient Egypt)

Abstract

The volume ‘Ancient perspectives on Egypt’ is one of eight collections of essays that make up the University College of London series ‘Encounters with ancient Egypt’, named after the conference held in mid December 2000 at the Institute of Archaeology of UCL. The series is a multidisciplinary effort to come to terms with the various roles ancient Egypt has played as a neighbouring policy, object of study, or idea in antiquity and the modern world.

The twelve articles collected in the present volume are concerned with the way ancient Egypt was viewed by its neighbours in the eastern Mediterranean during the period between about 3500 BCE, when the Pharaonic state slowly began to take shape, and 300 CE, when Egypt was part of the Roman Empire. As the editors have to admit in their introduction (chapter 1), the book is somewhat unevenly balanced with respect to the subjects treated and the approaches adopted for studying these. The first part of the book, dealing with the eastern Mediterranean at large in the Bronze Age, shows a strong emphasis on archaeological analysis, whereas the remaining part of the book reveals a predilection for textual analysis, focussing on the Greco-Roman period. This imbalance is of course to a large extent due to the nature of the sources, but a study, for example, of the role Egypt plays in a number of the books of the Old Testament might have brought an interesting perspective, the aspect of cultural memory, to the articles treating the Bronze Age. As far as the second part is concerned, it is striking that the encounter between Jews and Egyptians in the Persian, Hellenistic and Roman period is not given any attention. Read more...