Author Description

Ancient Egypt built a society on a remarkable mixture of the new, the useful and the beautiful, while retaining primitive magic, obscurantism, and the infantile but extraordinarily poetic. Egypt was also one of the most optimistic nations ever founded, inventing optimistic answers to many of man's fundamental questions. Writing in an easy to read narrative literary style while respecting the norms of Egyptological scholarship, the author examines the contradictory opinions of major Egyptologists (and the major loonies), and brings us closer to Egypt's core meaning and influence. Along the way, he illuminates the enchanting, imaginative beauty of the Egyptian saga. This, Volume One, situates the Egyptian religion, political system and society within the contexts - some of them stretching back as far as before c. 4000 BC - of the early history of religion, mythology, technology, art, psychology, sociology, migratory movements and geography. The anchoring of religious belief in divine immanence and diversity, but a frenzy for religious change without change, the omnipresence of magic, the immense powers of the pharaoh-god and the turning point for man that ancient Egypt represented in many key theological, political, artistic and technological domains from very early dates are examined.