A History of Ancient Egypt. Vol. 1: From the First Farmers to the Great Pyramid

During his long career in Egyptology, archaeologist Romer (The Great Pyramid) has excavated in the Valley of the Kings and Karnak, written a dozen books on the subject, and presented critically acclaimed TV documentaries. He is now in the process of reassessing the history of ancient Egypt. In this first of what will be two volumes, he covers from 5000 to 2550 BCE, from Egypt's "beginnings to the establishment of the full panoply of the pharaonic state." This formative period was an afterthought in Alan Gardiner's classic Egypt of the Pharaohs, literally placed at the end of the book. W.B. Emery's Archaic Egypt and Michael A. Hoffman's Egypt Before the Pharaohs offered popularly oriented overviews. Romer challenges the reader to reconsider the development of civilization in the Lower Nile Valley with unbiased eyes and to keep in mind the paucity of archaeological evidence from which the traditional narrative has been derived. He is a proponent of a dynamic evolution of the indigenous culture rather than of change coming to Egypt from external forces.