Customer Reviews

Ancient Egypt : Art And Archaeology Of The Land Of The Pharaohs

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I had been ploughing through the Silverman book on Ancient Egypt for weeks when a friend lent me this one. I just finished it and found the pictures spectacular and the organization very helpful. In addition to hundreds of very rich and colorful depictions of tomb paintings, it includes breathtaking aerial views of some of the larger sites. I ordered my own copy immediately.

Both are very interesting but in different ways. The Silverman book is organized by topic, and it does have a lot more detailed information. The Agnese-Re book is organized by site, which I found much more helpful since this will be my first trip to Egypt. It helped me decide what I really want to see at each site.

This is primarily a picture book featuring a number of Egypt's archaeological wonders. There are, however, also brief written descriptions and explanations of some of the major sites in Egypt.

The pictures are fine. (I wonder, though, if other books don't provide much of the same material.) The writing and editing, on the other hand, are quite poor. The site descriptions are rather dense reading, but strangely fail to convey much information. The writing style, such as it is, appears to change - rather jarringly - on several occasions. Perhaps most troubling in a book of this sort, however, it is often difficult to match the photos with their intended captions. This is not a high quality resource. Though I have not examined what other Ancient Egypt resources are available, I am quite certain you can do better.