Reviews

With Valley of the Golden Mummies, leading Egyptologist Hawass (Silent Images: Women in Pharaonic Egypt)Ädirector general of the Giza Pyramids and field director of the Bahariya Oasis excavationsÄoffers a richly illustrated chronicle of exploration and discovery at the oasis. It has as its centerpiece 105 highly publicized mummies from the Greco-Roman period, many of them adorned with gilded masks and ornaments. This is the most significant find in Egypt since the mid-1990s revelation of Tomb KV5, the complex burial site of many sons of Ramses II and cultural survey of the site adds depth to the study. Myliwiec (director, Research Ctr. for Mediterranean Archaeology, Polish Academy of Sciences; Egyptian archaeology, Warsaw Univ.) has updated the content and illustrations of the 1998 German edition of his 1993 Polish publication for this English-language version of The Twilight of Ancient Egypt. The coverage, spanning 1069-30 B.C.E., surpasses that of K.A. Kitchen's The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt, 1100-650 BC (Aris & Phillips, 1996) and is more readily accessible to the nonspecialist. During this vibrant period, Egypt was governed by a succession of foreign rulers who adopted Egyptian ways, interrupted by native princes who asserted their claims to be pharaoh. Libyans, Nubians, Persians, and finally the Macedonian Greeks brought new ideas and diversity to a land previously convinced of its cultural superiority. The author includes extensive quotations from contemporary historical texts as part of his narrative, an excellent bibliography, and a comparative chronology of Egypt, Western Asia, Mesopotamia/Persia, and Greece. Both publications are well suited to general readers and will be quality additions to any library's holdings in ancient history and archaeology.ÄEdward K. Werner, St. Lucie Cty. Lib. Syst., Ft. Pierce, FL Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.