Volume 44, Number 12 · July 17, 1997
The Mummy's Secret
By James Fenton
Ancient Faces: Mummy Portraits From Ancient Egypt Paul Roberts and John Taylor.
an exhibition at the British Museum, March 14-July 20, 1997.. Catalog of the exhibition by Susan Walker and Morris Bierbrier, with
British Museum Press, 244 pp., £18.99
The Mysterious Fayum Portraits: Faces from Ancient Egypt
by Euphrosyne Doxiadis
Abrams, 247 pp., $75.00
Portraits and Masks: Burial Customs in Roman Egypt
edited by Morris Bierbrier
British Museum Press, 176 pp., £40.00 (paper)
In May 1888 a passenger ship, the Thebes, brought William Flinders Petrie and his luggage from Alexandria to Liverpool. Both the man and the luggage were remarkable. Petrie was one of the first scientific archaeologists, but his science was placed firmly at the service of his religion. On the one hand, his first essay into Egyptology caused a mild shaking of heads among the British Israelites (believers that Britons were descended from the Lost Tribe) of his acquaintance, because he had conducted an accurate survey of the Gizeh pyramids, and undermined their belief that the Great Pyramid was perfect and therefore the work of God. On the other hand, his friend the Reverend A.H. Sayce recalls: 'While Iwas with him Petrie discovered the actual brick-platform on which Nebuchadrezzar's throne was erected during his invasion of Egypt, and of which the prophet Jeremiah has preserved the record. (xliii.10)'[1]
Review, 8122 words
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