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The Cambridge Ancient History
The Cambridge Ancient History series is a comprehensive account of ancient history, spanning Prehistory to Late Antiquity, published by the Cambridge University Press.
The first edition, consisting of twelve volumes, was planned by J. B. Bury, and published between 1924 and 1939. It proved to be successful and popular, both with scholars and the interested public.
Between 1970 and 2005 a second edition of the series, of fourteen volumes and nineteen books was produced. This new edition was extensively revised and rewritten so as to take account of the vast amount of new material and research that had come about in the intervening decades. There are also two additional volumes that carry the history forward from Constantine to A.D. 600.
This is the complete edition, of fourteen volumes in nineteen books, published in one box set.
The first edition, consisting of twelve volumes, was planned by J. B. Bury, and published between 1924 and 1939. It proved to be successful and popular, both with scholars and the interested public.
Between 1970 and 2005 a second edition of the series, of fourteen volumes and nineteen books was produced. This new edition was extensively revised and rewritten so as to take account of the vast amount of new material and research that had come about in the intervening decades. There are also two additional volumes that carry the history forward from Constantine to A.D. 600.
This is the complete edition, of fourteen volumes in nineteen books, published in one box set.
17620 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1970
About the author
I.E.S. Edwards
30 books9 followersIorwerth Eiddon Stephen Edwards CBE, FBA— known as I. E. S. Edwards— was an English Egyptologist considered to be a leading expert on the pyramids.
Edwards attended Merchant Taylors' School where he studied Hebrew and later at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge Cambridge University, gaining a 'First' in Oriental Languages. He was awarded the William Wright studentship in Arabic and received his doctorate in 1933.
In 1934 he joined the British Museum as Assistant Keeper in the Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities. He published Hieroglyphic Texts for Egyptian Stellae. in 1939. During World War II he was sent to Egypt on military duty. In 1946 he wrote The Pyramids of Egypt, which was published by Pelican Books in 1947. In 1955 he was appointed the Keeper of Egyptian Antiquities at the British Museum and organized the Tutankhamun exhibition in 1972. He remained there until his retirement in 1974.
On leaving the British Museum he worked with UNESCO during the rescue of the temple complex at Philae. He was also Vice-President of the Egypt Exploration Society, a Fellow of the British Academy (1962) and was awarded the CBE in 1968 for his services to the British Museum.
Edwards attended Merchant Taylors' School where he studied Hebrew and later at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge Cambridge University, gaining a 'First' in Oriental Languages. He was awarded the William Wright studentship in Arabic and received his doctorate in 1933.
In 1934 he joined the British Museum as Assistant Keeper in the Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities. He published Hieroglyphic Texts for Egyptian Stellae. in 1939. During World War II he was sent to Egypt on military duty. In 1946 he wrote The Pyramids of Egypt, which was published by Pelican Books in 1947. In 1955 he was appointed the Keeper of Egyptian Antiquities at the British Museum and organized the Tutankhamun exhibition in 1972. He remained there until his retirement in 1974.
On leaving the British Museum he worked with UNESCO during the rescue of the temple complex at Philae. He was also Vice-President of the Egypt Exploration Society, a Fellow of the British Academy (1962) and was awarded the CBE in 1968 for his services to the British Museum.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 2, 2013
I found this in the public library of Caldwell, Idaho. Why a library this town of 14,000 population and a agricultural hub would have this item has always mystified me. But, I found it a treasure. It is the definitive work on ancient history. It took me two years to read but it was well worth it.
April 4, 2017
It is perhaps worth noting what this book is, as a 19-volume collection totalling over 16,000 pages of dense material is not a project worth embarking on unless it suits. That is to say, this is a 5-star work for what it sets out to be, but can never be a 5-star work in many other ways.
The Cambridge Ancient History is part of a larger series, completed by The Cambridge Medieval History and The Cambridge Modern History that tell the story of Europe (and, in some cases, further afield) from geological prehistory to the middle of the 20th century. There are 19 books in the Ancient, 7 in the Medieval, and 13 dense tomes in the Modern (where the focus really does narrow down to Western Europe). It is, in other words, madness.
Why is it good? Well, it's by Cambridge. No, seriously. The professors and academics involved in each chapter and section have exhaustive knowledge of their subjects, and any given page details the scientific advances and knowledge (at least known to those in the last half of the 20th century, when these were published). For the most part, the approach is no-nonsense. This isn't some namby-pamby "listen to the people who claim the Pyramids were built by aliens" attitude, or "giving space to the idea" that there's a possibility that this was all faked by a deity who invented the world 2,000 years ago (it wasn't). This is science.
The tone is open-minded across the volumes, matter-of-fact although rarely all that enlivening. In many cases, the writers will happily go into immense detail on a subject (such as the colours and markings on Minoan pottery). Much like the best of the David Attenborough documentaries, it's hard to imagine how anyone could come away from this book anything less than completely convinced by the arguments at hand. Also, by taking the anthology approach of allowing experts to write each section (which were originally published as individual fascicles to help eager students), every section has the imprimatur of academia.
Combined with this, every volume has a detailed bibliography, maps where relevant, and lots of reassurance that all of the knowledge contained herein is part of a larger, ongoing conversation between academics and historians around the world, piecing together evidence to form hypotheses, then either verifying or discarding these as the decades go on. It's exactly what science should be, and it's a shame that the set is so expensive.
At the same time... of course, this is not for everyone, and isn't even necessarily the best way to learn this information. The books are written by academics and designed primarily for students and academics. Most people will find it practical to pick up the volume that suits the area they are interested in, rather than reading the whole work. If you don't have some knowledge of plate tectonics, entire chunks of pages would be better served as a doorstop. On top of this - as with other, similar, iconic works like The Arden Shakespeare - the volume was made for people with access to a university library. If a battle is deemed relevant, it may be discussed in detail. Other times, you may be directed to a different work entirely to discuss particular elements. Rather than showing contemporary views on, say, Cleopatra, the author might refer you to another work where you can find such views. The section on Sumerian kings won't actually list all of the Sumerian kings, as you might expect to find in a source book. Rather, it will discuss the various lists that exist, and their sources, with footnotes directing you to where you can find the list. So, although this book contains much useful information, it is by no means a comprehensive source, not a Complete Works that can replace the internet or access to a tertiary institution. Sometimes, you may come away from a section with only information about the information you were looking for! (The strings of technicalities are most prominent in these very early volumes, of course.)
On top of this, the internet has meant that armchair readers of a subject may find it easier to consult Wikipedia, science articles, and synopses of this information. There are good sources online for how the continents came to their present location that are speedier and just as satisfying as reading 60 pages of dense prattle. That's not to say any part of this set is unnecessary, but much of it serves a clear purpose that is not for the armchair historian: it is to provide a primer for academic students, or an overview for academics, that can direct them in expanding knowledge via the 15 or 20 relevant texts from the bibliography.
(Incidentally, I would have to put in a plug for applying for membership at your nearest university library. Many of them have non-student memberships for a price, which allow you some kind of access to the material. And of course, nearly all of them are open to the public anyway. Just pick a rack of books and get involved. It will help support the library and also widen your mind.)
Also, it's not as much of a problem in the Ancient set, but younger people in the 21st century seem to struggle with the notion that an academic (or bunch thereof) has all the information. It's for this reason that the older style of documentary - in which one person (admittedly, usually a white man in those days) narrates their view of the world direct to the camera for 13 episodes - has fallen by the wayside a bit. Although, for me, there is nothing better than listening to the learned (if only we could shake up the gender and colour bias somewhat!), it's worth noting that as part of a generation raised on special effects and multitasking, the question rages as to the best way to present this level of text and facts in a new era. But that's a digression.
It's exciting to many of us to find such a large, attractive set, with such a wide scope of information. And these volumes will inevitably not be read by that many due to their size, density, and the fact that such endless streams of factual knowledge eventually withers even the sharpest mind, without much emotional or personal connection to the subject. Some of the volumes are better than others at tackling social and cultural information, while unfortunately there is still a tendency for some to approach history as a series of battles and kings. True, these are often easier to glean from the evidence available, but there is so much more. The differences we see in culture, in vocabulary, in attitudes, just between 1960 and today are exactly what occurred to the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Ancient Chinese, and others. For a long time, these issues were seen as somehow "less than history", as feminine or as entertainment. Now, they are being seen more and more as vital, as they should be.
So, all in all, yes. These volumes are magisterial, and we should cherish them - if for no other reason then it is unlikely something similar will come along again.
The Cambridge Ancient History is part of a larger series, completed by The Cambridge Medieval History and The Cambridge Modern History that tell the story of Europe (and, in some cases, further afield) from geological prehistory to the middle of the 20th century. There are 19 books in the Ancient, 7 in the Medieval, and 13 dense tomes in the Modern (where the focus really does narrow down to Western Europe). It is, in other words, madness.
Why is it good? Well, it's by Cambridge. No, seriously. The professors and academics involved in each chapter and section have exhaustive knowledge of their subjects, and any given page details the scientific advances and knowledge (at least known to those in the last half of the 20th century, when these were published). For the most part, the approach is no-nonsense. This isn't some namby-pamby "listen to the people who claim the Pyramids were built by aliens" attitude, or "giving space to the idea" that there's a possibility that this was all faked by a deity who invented the world 2,000 years ago (it wasn't). This is science.
The tone is open-minded across the volumes, matter-of-fact although rarely all that enlivening. In many cases, the writers will happily go into immense detail on a subject (such as the colours and markings on Minoan pottery). Much like the best of the David Attenborough documentaries, it's hard to imagine how anyone could come away from this book anything less than completely convinced by the arguments at hand. Also, by taking the anthology approach of allowing experts to write each section (which were originally published as individual fascicles to help eager students), every section has the imprimatur of academia.
Combined with this, every volume has a detailed bibliography, maps where relevant, and lots of reassurance that all of the knowledge contained herein is part of a larger, ongoing conversation between academics and historians around the world, piecing together evidence to form hypotheses, then either verifying or discarding these as the decades go on. It's exactly what science should be, and it's a shame that the set is so expensive.
At the same time... of course, this is not for everyone, and isn't even necessarily the best way to learn this information. The books are written by academics and designed primarily for students and academics. Most people will find it practical to pick up the volume that suits the area they are interested in, rather than reading the whole work. If you don't have some knowledge of plate tectonics, entire chunks of pages would be better served as a doorstop. On top of this - as with other, similar, iconic works like The Arden Shakespeare - the volume was made for people with access to a university library. If a battle is deemed relevant, it may be discussed in detail. Other times, you may be directed to a different work entirely to discuss particular elements. Rather than showing contemporary views on, say, Cleopatra, the author might refer you to another work where you can find such views. The section on Sumerian kings won't actually list all of the Sumerian kings, as you might expect to find in a source book. Rather, it will discuss the various lists that exist, and their sources, with footnotes directing you to where you can find the list. So, although this book contains much useful information, it is by no means a comprehensive source, not a Complete Works that can replace the internet or access to a tertiary institution. Sometimes, you may come away from a section with only information about the information you were looking for! (The strings of technicalities are most prominent in these very early volumes, of course.)
On top of this, the internet has meant that armchair readers of a subject may find it easier to consult Wikipedia, science articles, and synopses of this information. There are good sources online for how the continents came to their present location that are speedier and just as satisfying as reading 60 pages of dense prattle. That's not to say any part of this set is unnecessary, but much of it serves a clear purpose that is not for the armchair historian: it is to provide a primer for academic students, or an overview for academics, that can direct them in expanding knowledge via the 15 or 20 relevant texts from the bibliography.
(Incidentally, I would have to put in a plug for applying for membership at your nearest university library. Many of them have non-student memberships for a price, which allow you some kind of access to the material. And of course, nearly all of them are open to the public anyway. Just pick a rack of books and get involved. It will help support the library and also widen your mind.)
Also, it's not as much of a problem in the Ancient set, but younger people in the 21st century seem to struggle with the notion that an academic (or bunch thereof) has all the information. It's for this reason that the older style of documentary - in which one person (admittedly, usually a white man in those days) narrates their view of the world direct to the camera for 13 episodes - has fallen by the wayside a bit. Although, for me, there is nothing better than listening to the learned (if only we could shake up the gender and colour bias somewhat!), it's worth noting that as part of a generation raised on special effects and multitasking, the question rages as to the best way to present this level of text and facts in a new era. But that's a digression.
It's exciting to many of us to find such a large, attractive set, with such a wide scope of information. And these volumes will inevitably not be read by that many due to their size, density, and the fact that such endless streams of factual knowledge eventually withers even the sharpest mind, without much emotional or personal connection to the subject. Some of the volumes are better than others at tackling social and cultural information, while unfortunately there is still a tendency for some to approach history as a series of battles and kings. True, these are often easier to glean from the evidence available, but there is so much more. The differences we see in culture, in vocabulary, in attitudes, just between 1960 and today are exactly what occurred to the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Ancient Chinese, and others. For a long time, these issues were seen as somehow "less than history", as feminine or as entertainment. Now, they are being seen more and more as vital, as they should be.
So, all in all, yes. These volumes are magisterial, and we should cherish them - if for no other reason then it is unlikely something similar will come along again.
March 30, 2021
So I’ve given up on this book after reading two chapters and part of the third. It’s not so much, per se, that it’s a 16,000 page book, but why it’s 16,000 pages long: It goes into far too much detail for anything resembling casual reading. Not only is there essentially no narrative (a near inevitability given that every chapter has a different author), but it goes into far too much depth as to the differing opinions of different historians, archaeologists, et. al., and to the specifics of what was found at which location, or what (for instance) the height of the Nile was at various periods before and during human settlement. A sample passage:
It’s all like this. Which is not to say that it’s unreadable to an educated person with a good dictionary and encyclopedia at hand (which, thanks to the Internet, is not a difficulty), or contains no useful knowledge; just that it gives tons of information on this level of expansiveness, while at the same time presuming a professional’s familiarity with the jargon of the subject, and an exhaustive knowledge of world geography (or a really good atlas constantly at hand). It’s just far too much to be worthwhile reading for most people.
If you are (or wish to be) a professional World (or Ancient World) Historian, this is probably a valuable and important work. Otherwise—well, if you happen to have access to a copy and wish to use it as a reference work to get a deep and over-erudite dive into specific topics relevant to the ancient world, that is probably worthwhile, but besides that, I recommend you pass this one by. It’s simply not fit for armchair consumption—especially the pointless first chapter, which was so bad and meaningless in its endless description of pointless geological information (that was too sparse for a student of geology and far too detailed for a student of history) that I assumed that the rest of the work had to be better. Well, it looks to be—but not better enough to be worth reading.
Don’t get me wrong—this is a profound work of academic scholarship. If I was writing a popular history of some aspect of the ancient world, I would feel obligated to read the relevant chapters first. But that’s what it’s useful for: as a resource for other writers, not as a source of historical knowledge for the personal erudition of laymen, and the latter is what I need. If anyone can recommend a good Ancient World history, I’d appreciate it.
As a final note, as I went through I compiled a Google Earth .kml file of all the mentioned locations in the first two chapters—dozens of them. At some point I’ll post it online and link it back here so that someone might benefit from my labors.
Meanwhile in Upper Egypt a falling-off of water-supply, first sign of a post-pluvial aridity which was later to affect the whole of the Nile valley, had initiated a local phase of aggradation, during which the river, unable to carry its load, had choked the valley with a thick deposit of silt. Without tracing in detail this rather complicated geological story, it is possible to say that at this stage the 8-9 m. aggradation gravels of Middle and Lower Egypt, in so far as they are accessible for study, contain the same flake industry, the Levalloisian, as do the 3–4 m. terrace and the basal silts of Upper Egypt.
It’s all like this. Which is not to say that it’s unreadable to an educated person with a good dictionary and encyclopedia at hand (which, thanks to the Internet, is not a difficulty), or contains no useful knowledge; just that it gives tons of information on this level of expansiveness, while at the same time presuming a professional’s familiarity with the jargon of the subject, and an exhaustive knowledge of world geography (or a really good atlas constantly at hand). It’s just far too much to be worthwhile reading for most people.
If you are (or wish to be) a professional World (or Ancient World) Historian, this is probably a valuable and important work. Otherwise—well, if you happen to have access to a copy and wish to use it as a reference work to get a deep and over-erudite dive into specific topics relevant to the ancient world, that is probably worthwhile, but besides that, I recommend you pass this one by. It’s simply not fit for armchair consumption—especially the pointless first chapter, which was so bad and meaningless in its endless description of pointless geological information (that was too sparse for a student of geology and far too detailed for a student of history) that I assumed that the rest of the work had to be better. Well, it looks to be—but not better enough to be worth reading.
Don’t get me wrong—this is a profound work of academic scholarship. If I was writing a popular history of some aspect of the ancient world, I would feel obligated to read the relevant chapters first. But that’s what it’s useful for: as a resource for other writers, not as a source of historical knowledge for the personal erudition of laymen, and the latter is what I need. If anyone can recommend a good Ancient World history, I’d appreciate it.
As a final note, as I went through I compiled a Google Earth .kml file of all the mentioned locations in the first two chapters—dozens of them. At some point I’ll post it online and link it back here so that someone might benefit from my labors.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews