Pyramids by Joyce Tyldesley, Viking, 拢18.99, ISBN 0670893226 Reviewed by Fekri Hassan
THE mysteries of how and, increasingly, why the pyramids were built has fascinated us for centuries. Reliable answers emerged only from deciphered ancient texts and exploration of the complex structures of entire pyramid installations, including the temples, walls, causeways, workmen鈥檚 towns and associated tombs of nobles and courtiers that surround the monumental structures themselves.
By 1947, there was enough information to allow the British Museum Egyptologist I. E. S. Edwards to produce his magisterial account The Pyramids of Egypt. Ahmed Fakhry followed this from the University of Cairo in 1961 with The Pyramids, a work that examined the monuments from many angles, including their archaeological, historical, religious, administrative, mathematical and architectural aspects.
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More recently, Mark Lehner of Harvard University鈥檚 Semitic Museum and the University of Chicago, and Miroslav Verner of Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic, have devoted much time and energy to archaeological excavation. They have produced The Complete Pyramids (1997) and The Pyramids: Their archaeology and history (2002), respectively, two books that are by far the most authoritative and comprehensive treatment of the pyramids to date.
Starting with Edwards, scholars have increasingly tried to deal with pyramid-building as part of a wider historical context. Joyce Tyldesley continues this concern 鈥� and gives far more space than her predecessors to the historical antecedents of pyramid building. In this new and readable introduction to these curious, magnificent structures she traces the religious and political ideas behind pyramids to the predynastic times, starting 7500 years ago.
She describes the pyramids as an integral element of an Egyptian society influenced by ancestral practices, contemporary politics and technological capabilities. (Any reader expecting tales of aliens will be disappointed.)
Tyldesley has read deeply in Egyptology, a study reflected in her account of recent discoveries in Giza by Mark Lehner and Zahi Hawass, the head of Egypt鈥檚 Supreme Council of Antiquities. She adheres to widely accepted notions on the relationship between pyramids and Egyptian society, though she often ventures beyond data to make offhand interpretations and explanations.
The fascination and lure of the pyramids will ensure that Pyramids will be widely read. It will, I hope, stir readers to travel and gain first-hand experience of these mind-bending ancient structures. Sadly, with the exception of the world-famous pyramids of Giza and those of northern Saqqara, visitors who stray off the tourist path will be appalled at the state of ruin and disrepair of other pyramids. The secrets of these sites, such as those that are now being investigated at southern Saqqara and Abu Sir, are crucial for understanding how monuments have shaped state societies from their beginning and how our craving for eternity has been a force of history.