Egypt of the Pharaohs. From Narmer to Diocletian. 3150 BC-284 AD.
Belin| N° d'inventaire | 21497 |
| Format | 17 x 24 |
| Détails | 847 p., color illustrations, paperback with flaps. |
| Publication | Paris, 2016 |
| Etat | Nine |
| ISBN | 9782701164915 |
Over the past thirty years, archaeological discoveries and the re-examination of ancient data have profoundly renewed our knowledge of ancient Egypt. These advances now make it possible to offer a new narrative, free from the routine of cyclical history where, between the "necessarily sumptuous empires," are interspersed dark "intermediate periods marked by the seal of decadence." The sixteen chapters that make up this volume evoke as many moments in this long history that begins at the end of the 4th millennium BC and ends with the conversion of the Roman emperors to Christianity. Despite the ecological, geostrategic, social, and economic transformations that Egypt experienced during these three millennia, its kings, even those who came from Persia, Macedonia, or distant Rome, slipped into a political costume tailored at the end of the 4th millennium BC. Was pharaonic power, however, immutable? To answer this question, we must not be blinded by the texts and monuments created by the pharaohs themselves: crushing pyramids, gigantic temples, sumptuous golden masks, in fact, give a rather erroneous image of omnipotence. An illusion that shatters if we abandon the myth of the Egyptian exception and consider the political history of monarchies as part of the more general history of the ancient worlds. Nearly three hundred iconographic documents and around thirty maps illustrate this history of the Egypt of the Pharaohs.
Over the past thirty years, archaeological discoveries and the re-examination of ancient data have profoundly renewed our knowledge of ancient Egypt. These advances now make it possible to offer a new narrative, free from the routine of cyclical history where, between the "necessarily sumptuous empires," are interspersed dark "intermediate periods marked by the seal of decadence." The sixteen chapters that make up this volume evoke as many moments in this long history that begins at the end of the 4th millennium BC and ends with the conversion of the Roman emperors to Christianity. Despite the ecological, geostrategic, social, and economic transformations that Egypt experienced during these three millennia, its kings, even those who came from Persia, Macedonia, or distant Rome, slipped into a political costume tailored at the end of the 4th millennium BC. Was pharaonic power, however, immutable? To answer this question, we must not be blinded by the texts and monuments created by the pharaohs themselves: crushing pyramids, gigantic temples, sumptuous golden masks, in fact, give a rather erroneous image of omnipotence. An illusion that shatters if we abandon the myth of the Egyptian exception and consider the political history of monarchies as part of the more general history of the ancient worlds. Nearly three hundred iconographic documents and around thirty maps illustrate this history of the Egypt of the Pharaohs.