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Lexikon der ägyptischen Baukunst.
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July 28, 2024
Arnold is the greatest living authority on ancient Egyptian architecture and building techniques, having written the most up-to-date book on Egyptian stone construction as well as numerous works on pyramid complexes and temple architecture. This may be his magnum opus, distilling all his wide-ranging expertise. It's mostly a translation of a book he wrote in German in 1994, but it has been expanded by Arnold himself and his editors, Nigel and Helen Strudwick.
There are entries for types and subtypes of buildings (e.g., fortress, house, grain store/silo, valley temple, saff tomb); types of rooms, architectural elements, and decorative motifs (serdab, hall of audiences, gateway, column, hypaetral, niching, khekher frieze); building materials (granite, brick, gypsum, woven timber construction); construction techniques and tools (ceiling construction, cramps, sledge, scaffolding); abstract architectural concepts (measuring, symbolism, symmetry); and architectural sites, ranging from whole cities down to significant individual tombs (such as the tombs of Kagemni or Horemheb, and even a rock tomb at Sawada that survives only in a drawing made during Napoleon's expedition to Egypt). The text is made much easier to understand by being richly illustrated, averaging maybe one illustration per page—photos, architectural plans and elevations, reconstruction sketches, and a few tracings of Egyptian artworks that portray construction processes. Each entry has a small bibliography listing the key scholarly works on the topic, and at the end there's a select bibliography listing the most significant books on Egyptian architecture that existed as of 2003.
Some of Arnold's terminology can be idiosyncratic. For example, "cult target"—the focus of a temple or tomb, in front of which people made offerings to the deity or deceased person who was honored there—is a useful concept, but as far as I know this phrase doesn't appear in any other Egyptological works, though I suppose it could be a translation of a term used in German Egyptology. Arnold's insistence on referring to step pyramids as "step mastabas" comes across as contrarian grumbling. But these are exceptional cases, and in general the book is an excellent guide to the terminology used in any discussion of ancient Egyptian buildings.
Oddly, the paperback edition was published under a different title, The Monuments of Egypt: An A-Z Companion to Ancient Egyptian Architecture.
There are entries for types and subtypes of buildings (e.g., fortress, house, grain store/silo, valley temple, saff tomb); types of rooms, architectural elements, and decorative motifs (serdab, hall of audiences, gateway, column, hypaetral, niching, khekher frieze); building materials (granite, brick, gypsum, woven timber construction); construction techniques and tools (ceiling construction, cramps, sledge, scaffolding); abstract architectural concepts (measuring, symbolism, symmetry); and architectural sites, ranging from whole cities down to significant individual tombs (such as the tombs of Kagemni or Horemheb, and even a rock tomb at Sawada that survives only in a drawing made during Napoleon's expedition to Egypt). The text is made much easier to understand by being richly illustrated, averaging maybe one illustration per page—photos, architectural plans and elevations, reconstruction sketches, and a few tracings of Egyptian artworks that portray construction processes. Each entry has a small bibliography listing the key scholarly works on the topic, and at the end there's a select bibliography listing the most significant books on Egyptian architecture that existed as of 2003.
Some of Arnold's terminology can be idiosyncratic. For example, "cult target"—the focus of a temple or tomb, in front of which people made offerings to the deity or deceased person who was honored there—is a useful concept, but as far as I know this phrase doesn't appear in any other Egyptological works, though I suppose it could be a translation of a term used in German Egyptology. Arnold's insistence on referring to step pyramids as "step mastabas" comes across as contrarian grumbling. But these are exceptional cases, and in general the book is an excellent guide to the terminology used in any discussion of ancient Egyptian buildings.
Oddly, the paperback edition was published under a different title, The Monuments of Egypt: An A-Z Companion to Ancient Egyptian Architecture.
Displaying 1 of 1 review