Emily TeeterCritiques

role of women in ancient Egypt, lots of artifacts

Sooner or later, every Egyptologist writes a “coffee table” book directed at the interested lay audience; this one is by Douglas Brewer of the University of Illinois and Emily Teeter of the University of Chicago. These are pretty standard; the geography and geology of Egypt; a quick summary of the history; society and everyday life; religion; art; architecture; the Pyramids and the Valley of the Kings. Still, every one I’ve read has some interesting insights. For example, Brewer and Teeter claim that two women held the office of vizier during Egyptian history; I’d never read that anywhere else. And they also comment that Egyptian women could serve on juries, something else I didn’t realize – I didn’t even know that there were “juries” in ancient Egypt, I’d thought all court cases were heard only by a single judge. I’ll have to do some more research. At any rate, this is as good as any of the other general books on Egypt.

A collection of essays released in conjunction with a 2010 exhibition at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. The "and beyond" of the subtitle feels like an aftertought, with a single essay each on early Chinese and Maya writing - the latter seems particularly out of place as Maya writing, unlike Sumerian, Chinese, and (most probably) Egyptian, didn't originate independently, but was clearly inspired by earlier Mesoamerican scripts.

The pieces on cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and the early alphabet are quite good, and really do focus on the invention or origin of the systems. Something I suspect is little appreciated is that from what's usually spoken of as the "first writing" in the late 4th millennium BC it took centuries until either hieroglyphs or cuneiform was used to write connected text with complete sentences - earlier writing consisted solely of isolated phrases, such as names, or stereotyped records where the reader had to supply details like verbs from context. The "invention of writing" was thus a very drawn-out process if one by writing understands something functionally like the modern form.

The essays on Hieratic, Demotic, Coptic and Anatolian hieroglyphs (aka Hieroglyphic Luwian/Hittite) are decent, but give a vague impression of mostly being included out of a sense of completeness. Hieratic separates from hieroglyphs very early on, but Coptic - a derivative of the Greek alphabet and younger than the Latin one - is surely very far from any origin of writing.