What do you think?
Rate this book
Mysterious Lands
The discipline of Egyptology has been criticised for being too insular,with little awareness of the development of archaeologies elsewhere. It has remained theoretically underdeveloped. For example the role of Ancient Egypt within Africa has rarely been considered jointly by Egyptologists and Africanists. Egypt's own view of itself has been neglected; views of it in the ancient past, in more recent times and today have remained underexposed. Encounters with Ancient Egypt is a series of eight books which addresses these issues. The books interrelate, inform and illuminate one another and will appeal to a wide market including academics, students and the general public interested in Archaeology, Egyptology, Anthropology, Architecture, Design and History. Mysterious Lands covers two kinds of encounters. First, encounters which actually occurred between Egypt and specific foreign lands, and second, those the Egyptians created by inventing imaginary lands. Some of the actual foreign lands are mysterious, in that we know of them only through Egyptian sources, both written and pictorial, and the actual locations of such lands remain unknown. These encounters led to reciprocal influences of varying intensity. The Egyptians also created imaginary lands (pseudo-geographic entities with distinctive inhabitants and cultures) in order to meet religious, intellectual and emotional needs. Scholars disagree, sometimes vehemently, about the locations and cultures of some important but unlocated actual lands. As for imaginary lands, they continually need to be re-explored as our understanding of Egyptian religion and literature deepens. Mysterious Lands provides a clear account of this subject and will be a stimulating read for scholars, students or the interested public.
- GenresHistoryNonfictionEgypt
264 pages, Paperback
First published August 9, 2000
28 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 14, 2023
Whereas another volume in the Encounters with Ancient Egypt series, Ancient Perspectives on Egypt, examines Egyptian interactions with other cultures primarily through outside sources, this one addresses how the Egyptians themselves perceived outside lands, both real and imagined.
James P. Allen gives a summary of Egyptian cosmology. (This is a thorny subject, though, and not until the publication of A Journey Through the Beyond in 2022 was there a book that adequately discussed the ambiguous nature of the evidence.) The next essay discusses how the Egyptians described travel through foreign lands, in both fiction and nonfiction. Four chapters cover Libya, Punt, and the Sea Peoples, three ancient societies that are mostly or entirely known from Egyptian sources. One of them makes a fairly compelling argument that Punt was in Arabia rather than the Horn of Africa, though, as it acknowledges, that doesn't fit all the evidence. (Personally, I suspect Punt was on both sides of the Red Sea; Djibouti and Yemen are very close together, and their subsequent history shows that people and culture moved frequently across the straits, so it's not hard to imagine that the Egyptians lumped both sides together.) Two chapters discuss the funerary texts that give detailed descriptions of the Egyptian underworld, an imaginary place. Another covers the Book of the Faiyum, a text that describes sacred sites in a real place, the Faiyum region, in an eccentric way that shares elements of both netherworld books and modern maps. The final chapter discusses how cultures the world over have perceived foreign people and places to serve their own purposes.
In fact, that is one of the most interesting themes in the book. Lands outside Egypt were realms of mystery and danger but also of sacredness—perhaps sort of a less extreme version of the underworld. Religious ideology thus shaped how they were perceived. Punt, for example, was considered important because it was the source of incense for temple rites. (As the book acknowledges, there may have been administrative and military texts that treated foreigners in a much more pragmatic fashion, but aside from the Amarna letters, little of them has survived.) Some additions to the book could have made this theme still stronger. One is Timothy Kendall's rather speculative thesis that the Egyptians drew parallels between the Nubian reaches of the Nile and the path of the sun god through the underworld. Another is David O'Connor's excellent essay "Egypt's View of 'Others'", which the series editors rather bizarrely placed in Never Had The Like Occurred rather than this volume. It shows how the pejorative label of "Nine Bows" for foreigners could also be applied to Egyptians who rebelled against the king, so that "inside" and "outside" Egypt were social categories as well as physical ones. Fortunately, O'Connor was one of the editors for this volume, and that insight is covered more briefly in its introduction.
James P. Allen gives a summary of Egyptian cosmology. (This is a thorny subject, though, and not until the publication of A Journey Through the Beyond in 2022 was there a book that adequately discussed the ambiguous nature of the evidence.) The next essay discusses how the Egyptians described travel through foreign lands, in both fiction and nonfiction. Four chapters cover Libya, Punt, and the Sea Peoples, three ancient societies that are mostly or entirely known from Egyptian sources. One of them makes a fairly compelling argument that Punt was in Arabia rather than the Horn of Africa, though, as it acknowledges, that doesn't fit all the evidence. (Personally, I suspect Punt was on both sides of the Red Sea; Djibouti and Yemen are very close together, and their subsequent history shows that people and culture moved frequently across the straits, so it's not hard to imagine that the Egyptians lumped both sides together.) Two chapters discuss the funerary texts that give detailed descriptions of the Egyptian underworld, an imaginary place. Another covers the Book of the Faiyum, a text that describes sacred sites in a real place, the Faiyum region, in an eccentric way that shares elements of both netherworld books and modern maps. The final chapter discusses how cultures the world over have perceived foreign people and places to serve their own purposes.
In fact, that is one of the most interesting themes in the book. Lands outside Egypt were realms of mystery and danger but also of sacredness—perhaps sort of a less extreme version of the underworld. Religious ideology thus shaped how they were perceived. Punt, for example, was considered important because it was the source of incense for temple rites. (As the book acknowledges, there may have been administrative and military texts that treated foreigners in a much more pragmatic fashion, but aside from the Amarna letters, little of them has survived.) Some additions to the book could have made this theme still stronger. One is Timothy Kendall's rather speculative thesis that the Egyptians drew parallels between the Nubian reaches of the Nile and the path of the sun god through the underworld. Another is David O'Connor's excellent essay "Egypt's View of 'Others'", which the series editors rather bizarrely placed in Never Had The Like Occurred rather than this volume. It shows how the pejorative label of "Nine Bows" for foreigners could also be applied to Egyptians who rebelled against the king, so that "inside" and "outside" Egypt were social categories as well as physical ones. Fortunately, O'Connor was one of the editors for this volume, and that insight is covered more briefly in its introduction.
March 8, 2021
Some might find this a bit dry (it is more of an academic book) but if you are interested in Ancient Egypt this is very interesting.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews