Pharaonic Egypt

Pharaonic Egypt sheds light on the principal events, cultural and social processes, and religious beliefs that influenced and shaped the development and flowering of a civilization on the Nile that lasted for thousands of years. Beginning with the first Neolithic cultures that settled along the banks of the Nile, this volume explores the era that saw the founding of the Predynastic Egyptian state. With the unification of the two Egyptian kingdoms, the pharaohs began to celebrate and immortalize their lives and achievements with the construction of stone monuments. The most impressive examples of their kind are arguably the pyramid tombs of the Old Kingdom, whose architectural evolution can be traced from the first step pyramid of Djoser to the magnificent pyramids of Giza, and on to the necropolises of Abusir and Saqqara. Alongside representations of the sovereign, sculpture and private burials are also examined, two areas that found new expressive forms during the First Intermediate Period and the Middle Kingdom. Ample space is devoted to the pharaohs of the New Kingdom, who with their military campaigns made Egypt one of the most powerful empires of the Near East, while stunning color photographs highlight the prodigious output of Egyptian art in all its splendor. The book’s final chapter examines the last centuries of the age of the pharaohs, up to the period of Greek and then Roman control of Egypt, an era when pharaonic culture came into contact and, in some cases, fused with the Hellenistic and Roman cultures of the time.