| |||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £3.60
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in The Prehistory of Egypt for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £3.60, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
"Egyptologists frequently have little understanding of the prehistoric past, especially the paleolithic periods, and it is commendable that Midant–Reynes has included this overview." International Journal of African Historical Studies <!––end––>
"... integrate[s] the prehistory of Egypt and Nubia through into the (Egyptian) Unification period, thus investigating the entire united Nile region and its flanking deserts in a logical but rarely encountered attempt to develop a cohesive picture ... In this the book succeeds admirably." Journal of African History
Product Description
This books covers the history of the Nile Valley from Nubia to the Mediterranean, during the period from the earliest hominid settlement, around 700,000 BC to the beginnings of dynastic Egypt at the end of the fourth millennium BC.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
First Sentence
The northeastern section of the African continent, between 24 and 31 latitude, is part of a series of deserts stretching for almost 1000 kilometres from the Atlantic end of the Sahara to the salt lakes of northern India. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
The northeastern section of the African continent, between 24 and 31 latitude, is part of a series of deserts stretching for almost 1000 kilometres from the Atlantic end of the Sahara to the salt lakes of northern India. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is a fantastic guide to the prehistory of Ancient Egypt. It spans from the Paleolithic to the Predynastic Period. As a lay-person, I found some of the terminology a bit daunting. However, a short google search on some of the terms brought me up to speed quickly, and the book became quite a bit easier to read. This book does use quite a few archaeological and geological principles that someone who isn't initiated in either field may struggle with at first. However, I liked that aspect of the book. This is not an emotive narrative, it is very much a synopsis of fieldwork that was carried out up until the late 1990s when the book was added to (the original version is from the early 1990s). Also, what may be surprising to some readers is that this book was written from the perspective of an expert in Prehistory, so she has a view point that is very much different from most Egyptologists who deal with the Pharaonic Period. Most of her book covers times when people did not have writing, so the emphasis is exclusively on the material culture.
If you are looking into finding out what archaeology has uncovered from the beginning of its use in Egypt to the 1990s and you want to concentrate exclusively on the period before the Dynastic Period, this book is a must-have. It is wonderfully well-written and gives a rigorously scientific view of what was going on in Egypt during this span of time. If you want a book that reads more like a narrative that relies more on the spectacular finds and less on descriptions of stonetools and pottery, this book does not fit that purpose so well and another may be better suited to your needs.
If you are looking into finding out what archaeology has uncovered from the beginning of its use in Egypt to the 1990s and you want to concentrate exclusively on the period before the Dynastic Period, this book is a must-have. It is wonderfully well-written and gives a rigorously scientific view of what was going on in Egypt during this span of time. If you want a book that reads more like a narrative that relies more on the spectacular finds and less on descriptions of stonetools and pottery, this book does not fit that purpose so well and another may be better suited to your needs.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This translation by Ian Shaw of Midant-Reynes classic book provides a thorough background to the field. She details each period with descriptions of sites and materials - and then explains how they all relate to each other. It is a wonderful scholarly read and a superb introduction to the period.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I agree with the above reviews so I won't duplicate what they say.
One of its particular strengths is that it gives good coverage of Nubia, as well as Egypt. Nubia's prehistory is often presented in a rather fragmented way, partly because the survey and excavation work itself has a long way to go before it can provide a coherent picture of Nubia's past, and partly because the Sudan is so vast. But Midant-Reynes does a good job of presenting the different areas and industries in a structured and digestible way.
The description of the Nabta Playa sequences is well expressed, but slightly out of date. It has since been refined.
On the downside, if you are new to the subject it may frustrate you to find that there are very few illustrations of artefacts or sites, which as a novice may make it difficult to get to grips with some of the descriptions of lithics, ceramics and site plans. As a previous reviewer pointed out, this book is all about things excavated from the ground - the material record - and the lack of illustration may make it very difficult to visualize what is going on from one industry to another and from one phase to another.
The few maps are okay but they are tucked away at the end of the book, when it would have been more useful if they had been dotted throughout.
I would have liked to have seen a much more in-depth discussion of the different chronological schemes for the Predynastic period, and would have found it very useful to have seen much better graphic depictions of periods and dates.
Apart from the above quibbles (of which the lack of illustrations is the most serious), it is a good solid reference text, and an invaluable overview of the periods concerned. Apart from David Wengrow's "The Archaeology of Early Egypt" there is no modern text to compare with it.
One of its particular strengths is that it gives good coverage of Nubia, as well as Egypt. Nubia's prehistory is often presented in a rather fragmented way, partly because the survey and excavation work itself has a long way to go before it can provide a coherent picture of Nubia's past, and partly because the Sudan is so vast. But Midant-Reynes does a good job of presenting the different areas and industries in a structured and digestible way.
The description of the Nabta Playa sequences is well expressed, but slightly out of date. It has since been refined.
On the downside, if you are new to the subject it may frustrate you to find that there are very few illustrations of artefacts or sites, which as a novice may make it difficult to get to grips with some of the descriptions of lithics, ceramics and site plans. As a previous reviewer pointed out, this book is all about things excavated from the ground - the material record - and the lack of illustration may make it very difficult to visualize what is going on from one industry to another and from one phase to another.
The few maps are okay but they are tucked away at the end of the book, when it would have been more useful if they had been dotted throughout.
I would have liked to have seen a much more in-depth discussion of the different chronological schemes for the Predynastic period, and would have found it very useful to have seen much better graphic depictions of periods and dates.
Apart from the above quibbles (of which the lack of illustrations is the most serious), it is a good solid reference text, and an invaluable overview of the periods concerned. Apart from David Wengrow's "The Archaeology of Early Egypt" there is no modern text to compare with it.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
