Customer Reviews

Great Egyptians [VHS]

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

 

 

The King of the Pyramids, The Mystery of Tutankhamen, and The Real Cleopatra.
Meet Sneferu, the ambitious pharaoh who taught Egypt how to build the pyramids. Learn about the real Cleopatra, the brilliant queen who gambled everything to become one of history's greatest legends. Incestigate the mystery of Tutankhamen, the young king who may have been the victim of a serial killer. The thing I liked most of theses videos is they tell a story with good graphics,drama, and music to help.

Bob Brier deserves a lot of credit to bring back to life the wonders of a great builder like Pharoh Snefru who set the stage for the worlds great pyramids to be built. Hats off to this genius!
The story of Tutenkhamun and Cleopatra are very well depicted.

It is because of dedicated people like Bob Brier and the Discovery channel team, that we are able to understand the genius that lies behind the making of the Pyramids. Great job team!You deserve an applause....

This is an incredible series. Bob has a great deal of passion for the topic and it shows. He really brings ancient Egypt to life.

The Great Egyptians" is a 3-video series that originally aired on TLC in 1998. Egyptologist Bob Brier narrates and hosts this video series, and does a fine job doing both, providing a very good introduction to some of the most famous pharaohs of ancient Egypt.

Format: VHS
Length: 200 minutes on 4 videocassettes.

Synopsis/Review.

Episode 1 of "The Great Egyptians" is about Cleopatra. This episode is a fine biography of the last pharaoh of Egypt, Queen Cleopatra. Full of re-enactment video footage, as well as vintage footage from the movie "Cleopatra" of Elizabeth Taylor fame. An excellent biography of Cleopatra, Bob Brier does a fine job narrating and explaining the historical context.

Episode 2 of "The Great Egyptians" covers the pyramid building age. Instead of covering the Great Pyramids of Giza, he focuses this episode on the Pharaoh Snefru, the father of the builder of the Great Pyramid. The reason Bob Brier chooses this king as his subject is because this is the only pharaoh who built 3 pyramids! The three include two failures, the collapsed pyramid of Maidum, that collapsed half way during its construction. The second failure is the "bent pyramid" of Dashur, which had to have its construction radically changed in the middle of construction to avoid the fate of its predecessor. Finally, the first true pyramid was built, the "Red Pyramid", also at Dashur. A great episode, this one has lots of great footage of these pyramids, which are not frequented by tourists.

Episode 3 covers the famous female pharaoh, Queen Hatshepsut. Less famous than Cleopatra, this woman is perhaps more remarkable in that she took the reigns of the Egyptian empire in the middle of the New Kingdom, Egypt's empire period. A great episode!

Episode 4. King Tut. This episode is the reason I give this video collection only 4 stars instead of 5 stars. This is Bob Brier at his worst attempt at sensationalism when it comes to ancient Egypt. This episode is a shameless plug for his book about the "murder of king tut".
Brier in this episode does his best to convince the viewer that King Tutankhamon was murdered by his successor, the Pharaoh Eye. Mostly based on conjecture with very little fact, this episode should not have been included, in my opinion.

But, all in all, this is a very good video set for the Egypt enthusiast, even despite the last episode. A great introduction to specific rulers of Egypt, I recommend it.

This three tape set covers the Real Cleopatra,The King of the Pyramids(Sneferu) and the Mystery of Tutankhamen. Prof. Bob Brier(C.W.Post U.) takes you through the lives and deaths of these three monarchs in a way only Bob Brier can. With a wit and affection for this ancient culture that comes across so evidently. You get an insight into plots,suicide,possible and actual murders and architectual failures and successes. The visuals are fantastic,wether showing the beautiful Egyptian landscape or the painted hieroglyphs in an ancient tomb or temple. A must set for any Ancient Egypt fan out there.