Read Akhenaten Egypt False Prophet eBook Nicholas Reeves
Download As PDF : Akhenaten Egypt False Prophet eBook Nicholas Reeves
Nicholas Reeves’s radical interpretation of a revolutionary king—now available in paperback.
One of the most compelling and controversial figures in ancient Egyptian history, Akhenaten has captured the imagination like no other Egyptian pharaoh. Much has been written about this strange, persecuted figure, whose depiction in effigies is totally at odds with the traditional depiction of the Egyptian ruler-hero. Akhenaten sought to impose upon Egypt and its people the worship of a single god—the sun god—and in so doing changed the country in every way.
In Akhenaten, Nicholas Reeves presents an entirely new perspective on the turbulent events of Akhenaten’s seventeen-year reign. Reeves argues that, far from being the idealistic founder of a new faith, the Egyptian ruler cynically used religion for political gain in a calculated attempt to reassert the authority of the king and concentrate all power in his hands. Backed by abundant archaeological and documentary evidence, Reeves’s narrative also provides many new insights into questions that have baffled scholars for generations—the puzzle of the body in Tomb 55 in the Valley of the Kings; the fate of Nefertiti, Akhenaten’s beautiful wife; the identity of his mysterious successor, Smenkhkare; and the theory that Tutankhamun, Akhenaten’s son and heir to the throne, was murdered.
Read Akhenaten Egypt False Prophet eBook Nicholas Reeves
"Good book - another in my collection as I am a chair archaeologist. I recommend Mr. Reeves books and hope you will get a copy."
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Akhenaten Egypt False Prophet eBook Nicholas Reeves Reviews :
Akhenaten Egypt False Prophet eBook Nicholas Reeves Reviews
- I have always been an amrchair Egyptologist and I love the 18th dynasty. It was a wonderful and informative book
and its author Nicholas Reeves is a genius. Currently he is on a quest to discover a new tomb behind King Tut's tomb.
We do not know what the future holds but the past is an encylopedia of knowledge. - Akhenaten is arguably the most written-about pharoh in the last century. His role as "heretic" in moving the capital of Egypt to Akhenaten, his recreating the proportion and style of Egyptian art, and most significantly his redefining Egyptian religion make for dramatic history and fascinating reading. It was with disappointment, then, that Reeves' study is so mediocre.
Fully the first third of the book details the archeological discovery of Tell el-Amarna and the history of Egypt to the 18th dynasty, and details of several generations of Akhenaten's family (from Hatshepsut through Amenhotep III). Certainly some context and background is necessary, but much of what is provided here is only thinly relevant to the topic of the book. In discussing Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV) and his revolutionary changes, little analysis is provided behind *why* Akhenaten made the changes he did, Reeves instead focusing primarily on the details of archeological digs at Tell el-Amarna. Similarly, there is little interpretation of the material found, Reeves apparently more comfortable in explaining what was found. This is not to suggest that the book is entirely devoid of inference or evaluation - but this is very much lacking relative to the exposition that makes up the majority of the book.
For example, I had anticipated greater depth and discussion in the changes in scale of Amarna art, as well as in the depictions of Nefertiti and the royal family. I had also hoped for some broader summary of competing interpretations of who Smenkhare is another wife of Akhenaten? another incarnation of Nefertiti? A co-regent? His discussion of the end of the 18th dynasty - Tutankhamun and Ay - was also cursory, I felt. On an unrelated note, I was also mildly irritated at Reeves' use of the Hellenized names of pharohs - "Amenophis" instead of the Egyptian "Amenhotep."
A much more detailed and clearer discussion of Akhanaten, his changes and the demise of the 18h dynasty that addresses a variety of historical interpretations can be found in The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt. - Arrived promptly. Lovely book.
- It is very welcome to have a really critical examination of Akhenaten. Unfortunately, Reeves often stoops to blatant and crude villainizing. In order to do this he repeatedly resorts to anachronistic value judgements without showing how Akhenaten really was any worse in these ways than any other pharaoh. He repeatedly claims that the Aten worship was newly invented by Akhenaten and that he imposed it on the people. He never betrays that the Aten worship was the private religion of the pharaohs being revealed to and shared with the people directly. Particularly anachronistic is his criticism of The Great Hymn to the Aten, that it was not original, when these people, long known for their conservatism, did not value what we would call originality. Their concept of originality was the ideal state of affairs that existed during the earliest days of the world. If the revealing of the Aten worship to the common people was not original, what ever has been in all history? For Reeves, Akhenaten's realism becomes "not idealism but a perverted reality." Somehow he has a handsome statuette interpreted as Akhenaten while the realistic depictions of the royal family in all their honest ugliness is to him somehow stylistic. I suspect the statuette must have been the fine first born older brother who was no doubt much more capable and better prepared to rule than his younger brother. The really shameful part is when Reeves characterizes Akhenaten's Platonic affection for Nefertiti as vulgar. I wonder if this licentious contempt of Mr. Reeves for Akhenaten comes from the fact that Akhenaten is half Nubian?
- Good book - another in my collection as I am a chair archaeologist. I recommend Mr. Reeves books and hope you will get a copy.
- Too much dedicated to other aspects of Egyptian History and very little on Akhenaten. This lack of information made the reading boring!
- If you are remotely interested in the reign of Akhenaten, which most of us interested in Egyptology are, you can find enough different depictions of the man to leave you thoroughly confused. Was he a pragmatic politician out to break the power of the Amun priesthood (Aldred)? A megalomaniac who enjoyed watching his people broil in the noon-day sun (Redford)? A predecessor of Moses seeking truth in monotheism (Hornung and Lorton)? The deranged gay lover of his brother Smenkhkare (Allen Drury?) Or something else? Where Reeves sticks to the generally-agreed facts provided by recent research, he produces a good and very readable book on the Amarna period. But his own theories, many of them still controversial among Egyptologists (that Smenkhkhare was really another name for Nefertiti, that the late 18th Dynasty were a homicidally dysfunctional family in which Akhenaten, Nefertiti and Tutankhamen were all murdered in succession, that the skeleton found in a disordered tomb near Tutankhamen's is actually that of Akhenaten, and that the woman's mummy found in a side room of the tomb of Amenhotep II is Nefertiti) keep getting in the way of the facts. In order to get a really thorough view of Akhenaten, I recommend reading all of the above treatments (well, maybe not Drury, since it is admittedly a novel), which will show you not the whole truth about Akhenaten, but how much we DON'T know about him after over a century of research.
