The Archaeology of Early Egypt: Social Transformations in North-East Africa, c.10,000 to 2,650 BC (Cambridge World Archaeology)

David Wengrow gives us a fresh, scholarly work that is both informative and provocative. It provides an excellent companion to The Prehistory of Egypt by Beatrix Midant-Reynes. The writing is accessible and I enjoyed the first reading and even more the second. It is super how he brings in early Egyptian ties to Palestine, the Levant and Mesopotamia. I wish he would have tackled the significance of the fascinating rock art of the Eastern Desert, as well as the huge buried piece of shaped sandstone and cattle tumuli at Nabta Playa. This is a wonderful book and I recommend it.Physics Prof and Egypt Fan

great

This book collects a good deal of intelligible and interesting descriptive information on the archaeology of "pre-dynastic" Egypt. However, the discursive interpretive parts of the writing are "accessible" only in the sense that most of the words (not to include the surfeit of French words and phrases, which apparently represent concepts so exaltedly esoteric as to be untranslatable) can be found in a dictionary of the English language. Interesting book, but with some calculated abstruseness, at times verging on opacity suggestive of smugness. [Postscript: In later reading David O'Connor's "Abydos", I find my criticism of Wengrow's book vindicated by O'Connor's own comments (p. 137) on "The Archaeology of Early Egypt" (and other books of similar vintage, with similarly premature theorizing): "Grand theories...are proposed about early culture and kingship in Egypt, but are based on heterogeneous and random archaeological data.... So far, these data are an inadequate foundation for the complex speculations built upon them, for the evidence still has substantial ambiguities and gaps." Where O'Connor politely says "grand", I will say "grandiose".]

This book discusses and analyzes the Prehistoric/Predynastic period, according to Social Themes such as Burial hierarchies Growth of towns, and Kingship burials. With an extensive bibliography (with citations throughout the text pointing to the appropriate individual references) this is an excellent resource for students of archaeology of both Egypt and its context within the ancient Near East. Passionately interested independent researchers will also find this a valuable reference.

This might have been a good book, if the author had more humility. Instead, he provides the occasional bit of information and then proceeds to vapour about it for many pages. He says he will tie what he knows of ancient Egypt in with what I would term post-Marxist cultural theory; but in fact he does not do so.Older writers sought to learn what they could of the great synthesis of Egyptian culture. Our author is content to use a shoe-horn. Unfortunately the shoe he is using is much too narrow for his project. He has never considered that the Egyptians who forged the Egyptian state, around Dynasty 0, might have understood more of human nature and of human interactions than he can.Oh yes - his ancient Egyptians dance but they do not fight. Nice!