Best of
Egypt

1984

Ancient Lives: The Story of the Pharaohs' Tombmakers


John Romer - 1984
    Illustrated with both color photos and black-and-white drawings, this groundbreaking study goes back more than 3,000 years to a village where the workers who created the tombs of the Pharaohs and the Valley of the Kings resided. "John Romer is an archeologist with a genius for raising the busy ghosts of ancient Egypt."--Sunday Times

The Twelfth Transforming


Pauline Gedge - 1984
    In The Twelfth Transforming, Pauline Gedge tells the rich and dramatic story of Akhenaten's catastrophic rule -- and of the Empress Tiye, whose efforts to save her beloved country from her pharaoh son unwittingly bring a curse upon the land. In scene after scene, ancient Egypt comes vividly to life: the splendour of the imperial courts; the unrelenting heat of the desert; the misery wrought upon the land when the life-giving Nile fails in its annual inundation. The Twelfth Transforming is historical fiction at its finest, an epic of a ruler, a dynasty, and a people confronting their glorious and tragic destiny.

Selections from the Husia: Sacred Wisdom from Ancient Egypt


Maulana Karenga - 1984
    In this selection we read the earliest written record of the dawning of humanity's structured consciousness concerning spirituality and ethics. Here we find, for the first time in human history, the concepts of Maat (truth, justice, rightness), humans in the image of God, human dignity, judgment after death, free will, immortality of the soul, human equality, and social justice.

The Blue Faience Hippopotamus


Joan Marshall Grant - 1984
    Having fallen in love with a human princess, a hippopotamus goes to a magician to be turned into something that the princess could love in return.

The Search for God in Ancient Egypt


Jan Assmann - 1984
    The Search for God in Ancient Egypt offers a distillation of Jan Assmann's views on ancient Egyptian religion, with special emphasis on theology and piety. Deeply rooted in the texts of ancient Egypt and thoroughly informed by comparative religion, theology, anthropology, and semiotic analysis, Assmann's interpretations reveal the complexity of Egyptian thought in a new way.Assmann takes special care to distinguish between the implicit theology of Egyptian polytheism and the explicit theology that is concerned with exploring the problem of the divine. His discussion of polytheism and mythology addresses aspects of ritual, the universe, and myth; his consideration of explicit theology deals with theodicy and the specifics of Amarna religion.

A Woman of Cairo


Noel Barber - 1984
    Their lives entwined since childhood, they grow ever closer as adults. Yet Serena's hand has been promised not to Mark, but to his brother, Greg. As World War II speeds closer to Cairo, a shocking accident gives these young lovers a second chance—but with this chance comes terrible danger. Egypt is threatened not only by the German army but by nationalist forces within Cairo determined to end the British occupation at any cost. The country torn apart, and enemies everywhere, Mark and Serena's love is tested to the limit.

The British Empire in the Middle East, 1945 - 1951: Arab Nationalism, the United States, and Postwar Imperialism


William Roger Louis - 1984
    Committed to the liquidation of the old British Empire, the government sought to develop new relationships in the Middle East as a replacement for India, hopingto halt the decline of the Empire by putting it on a new basis. Caught between the forces of anti-British nationalism and American anti-colonialism, the attempt was ultimately destined to fail; but it marks a crucial phase in the story of British imperialism and of Middle Eastern history.