Customer Reviews

Ancient Egyptian Myths and Legends

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The details this book gives are extraordinary and the accompanying plates and illustrations are wonderful, though on occasion their quality is waning. I particularily found fascinating the study of the five parts of the being and their capabilities when the body containing them was alive or deceased. The influence of dreams is also looked at, albeit briefly. My only real complaint might be that since it was written in the early twentieth century, Pharaoh names and place-names are rendered differently, which is a bit odd, and the authors habit of referring to the ancient Egyptians as savage and primitive gets a bit annoying. I realize that this is only a reflection of the attitude of his day, and thus I will not hold such against Mr. Spence as the rest of the work more than makes up for these blemishes of preference.

This book is great for lovers of Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody novels---it shows the state of knowledge about ancient Egypt in the early 20th century. This book was published originally in 1915. It's a classic. But it's NOT a good source for up-to-date scholarship on ancient Egyptian religion. The author's thesis is that ancient Egyptians were just as barbarous in their primitive beliefs as any other savages are. This can be very amusing to read, but. . . . Much of the information is outdated, some of it is just plain discredited; it's also occasionally quite insightful. It's more likely to confuse somebody who doesn't know much about ancient Egypt than to help, though.

Ancient Egyptian Myths and Legends is the best collection of Egyptian myths I've found anywhere. Every aspect of Egyptian gods and dieties was mentioned in full detail. You have a question, I promise it will answer. Definitely a book to add to your shopping cart if you love Egyptian myth

This book is not only sadly out of date, the author admits most scholars would consider it absolutely wrong and spends much time defending his own credentials. Indeed, his entire preface is a plea to take him seriously even though he's writing for the popular market because his contemporary scholars would reject his work.

He gets a lot of stuff wrong. For example, he has a photo of Ahkenaten sitting on his throne with the hands of the solar disk Aten holding anks to him and this is labelled as being an image of the Aten. The figure is most certainly not the deity, but the pharaoh. He spends pages on animal worship and completely ignores the Apis bull. He makes connections where there are none (between Osiris's coffin being caught in a tree and a type of vegetation worship for which we have no evidence). If you want to know about Egyptian mythology, look elsewhere.