Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
What first drew you to Ancient Egypt?
When I was five years old, my mum and dad gave me a little children’s encyclopaedia for my birthday. On one of its pages, different writing systems from around the world were set out; there was Roman, Arabic and Indian writing. The figures that really drew my eye were the hieroglyphics. I worked out – which was terribly precocious, I know – how to write my name in hieroglyphics. At least it was only four letters long! And from that moment on, I thought: ‘I want to be able to do this properly. I want to be able to read this language as a real language.’ So that was the seed that was planted at the age of five.
That’s impressive! Let’s talk about your first choice. What made you decide to go for an atlas? (This is Cultural Atlas of Ancient Egypt, by John Baines and Jaromir Malek.)
Actually, that was the very first Egyptology book that I bought with my own money. I bought it before going to university, in preparation for studying Egyptology. I have always loved atlases, and find them a very compelling way of presenting the world.
This has remained my most-thumbed book on Ancient Egypt for the last 23 years. It has fantastic maps, photographs, illustrations, tables and charts. It presents what is a very complex civilisation in a visually compelling and accessible way, and is written by two of the best Egyptologists in the UK. So it is an incredibly useful compendium of knowledge. And because it is divided into sections and sites, and there are lots of maps and plans, it’s not too difficult to wade into it. You can just pick and choose from its contents and hit upon the things that interest you. It is a very accessible way into what is quite a complicated subject.
As opposed to your next book, Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilisation, which is slightly more complicated, because it represents a reassessment of Ancient Egypt – right?
Yes. This is, to my mind, one of the most original pieces of scholarship on Ancient Egypt published in the last 50 years – and there is a particular connection to me, because the author, Barry Kemp, was my lecturer at university. He also supervised my doctoral thesis, so I know him very well. But that is not the reason I chose the book!
I chose it because, as its name suggests, it is a brilliant dissection of Ancient Egypt – using not the surgeon’s scalpel, but the archaeologist’s trowel, if you like. It goes beneath the skin of Ancient Egypt and examines what made that civilisation tick. And it is so full of original insights; Barry Kemp is a really original thinker. He looks at archaeological evidence in an extraordinary way. So, for example, when he is looking at early temples, Barry is not afraid to have an educated guess and reconstruct a very plausible picture of early religious life in Ancient Egypt, which fits all the archaeological evidence beautifully, but is also very imaginative.
Another great thing about the book, and a reason I think so many people love it, is that it is full of wonderful illustrations. They are just about the most useful illustrations in any academic book on Ancient Egypt, and they are all by Barry Kemp himself. They really bring complicated subjects alive. For anyone who wants to get beneath the surface of Ancient Egypt, it is a fascinating discussion and analysis.
What kind of new assessments does he make?
This is the extraordinary thing. The first edition of Barry Kemp’s book was published in 1989, and the second edition came out 16 years later, and there is so much new information in the second edition; this only emphasises to me just how rapidly the subject is moving on. There have been dozens of new excavations, and because Barry is the doyen of Egyptian archaeology, he has his finger right on the pulse of all the new work that is going on. For example, if you look at the excavations in the north-eastern Delta at Tell ed-Daba, which was home to an Asiatic line of pharaohs called the Hyksos, who invaded Egypt in about 1650 BC, there is this very distinctive Palestinian culture with all sorts of weird and wonderful things that you never usually find in Egypt. And the way that Barry takes that site and brings it to life to illuminate a very peculiar episode in Ancient Egyptian history is just brilliant.
Next up is Tutankhamun’s Armies, by John Coleman Darnell and Colleen Manassa.
Yes. This is another very original little book, which actually goes far beyond what the title would suggest, because it is not just about Tut’s armies; it is also about foreign policy and internal security at the time of Tutankhamun, which is one of the most fascinating periods in the long history of Ancient Egypt. What it does is to vividly bring to life a particular period which many people are very interested in. This is the reign of Akhenaten, the so-called ‘heretic king’, who was Tutankhamun’s father.
It really conjures up what life was like at that time.
Toby Wilkinson read Egyptology at Cambridge University. Since January 2004, he has been a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge. He is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Egyptian History and has broadcast on radio and TV in the UK and abroad, including BBC’s ‘Horizon’ and Channel 4’s ‘Private Lives of the Pharaohs’. He was also the consultant for the BBC’s award-winning documentary on the building of the Great Pyramid. His books include the critically acclaimed Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt and Dictionary of Ancient Egypt, and he edited the recent encyclopaedia, The Egyptian World.
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