Volume 26, Number 15 · October 11, 1979
Tut-Tut-Tut
By Peter Green
RECENTLY PUBLISHED BOOKS DISCUSSED IN THIS ESSAY
Treasures of Tutankhamun
with commentary by I.E.S. Edwards, photographs by Lee Boltin
Ballantine, 176, 175 illustrations pp., $8.95 (paper)
Tutankhamun: His Tomb and His Treasures
by I.E.S. Edwards
Knopf, 256, 203 illustrations pp., $35.00
The Gold of Tutankhamun
by Arnold C. Brackman, by Kamal El Mallakh, with a preface by William Kelly Simpson
Newsweek Books, 16, black and white illustrations pp., $60.00
Egyptian Treasures from the Collections of the Brooklyn Museum
with commentaries by Robert S. Bianchi, photographs by Seth Jowel
Abrams, 64 pp., $10.95 (paper)
An Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary
by E.A. Wallis Budge
Dover (reprint of London 1920 edition), 2 vols pp., $20.00 (paper)
Egypt Observed
by Henri Gougand, by Colette Gouvion
Oxford University Press, 130, 128 photographs, 64 in full color pp., $19.95
Ramesses the Great, Master of the World
by William MacQuitty, foreword by T.G.H. James
Crown, 64 pp., $4.95 (paper)
Tutankhamun: The Untold Story
by Thomas Hoving
Simon and Schuster, 384 pp., $12.95
The Discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamen
by Howard Carter, by A.C. Mace
Dover (reprint of 1923 edition), 382 pp., $4.00 (paper)
Egypt Before the Pharaohs: The Prehistoric Foundations of Egyptian Civilization
by Michael A. Hoffman
Knopf, 416, 87 illustrations pp., $15.95
The Ancient Egyptians: A Sourcebook of Their Writings
by Adolf Erman
Peter Smith, 381 pp., $10.00
The Wisdom of the Ancient Egyptians
by William MacQuitty
New Directions, 85 pp., $3.25 (paper)
Ancient Egypt: A Cultural Topography
by Hermann Kees
University of Chicago Press (Phoenix Books), 392, 25 illustrations pp., $6.95 (paper)
Egyptian Religion: Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life
by E.A. Wallis Budge
Routledge & Kegan Paul (reprint of London 1899 edition), 216 pp., $5.95 (paper)
Egyptian Magic
by E. A. Wallis Budge
Dover, 234 pp., $3.00 (paper)
The Egyptian Gods: A Handbook
by Alan W. Shorter
Routledge & Kegan Paul (reprint of London 1937 edition), 156 pp., $10.00
Temples, Tombs and Hieroglyphs
by Barbara Mertz
Dodd, Mead (revised edition), 335 pp., $7.95 (paper)
Red Land, Black Land: Daily Life in Ancient Egypt
by Barbara Mertz
Dodd, Mead (revised edition), 385 pp., $7.95 (paper)
Ancient Egypt
by Warner Hutchinson
Grosset and Dunlap, 116 pp., $7.95 (paper)
Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid
by Piazzi Smyth
Multimedia (reprint of London 1890 edition), 628, 24 illustrations pp., $15.00 (paper)
The Great Pyramid Decoded
by Peter Lemesurier
Avon, 350 pp., $3.95 (paper)
Serpent in the Sky: The High Wisdom of Ancient Egypt
by John Anthony West
Harper & Row, 253 pp., $18.95
The First Practical Pyramid Book
by Norman Stark
Andrews and McMeel, 167 pp., $5.95 (paper)
The Shrines of Tut-Ankh-Amon
translated by Alexandre Piankoff, edited by N. Rambova
Princeton University Press, Bollingen Series No. XL:2, 176, 64 plates pp., $5.95 (paper)
The Egypt Story: Its Art, Its Monuments, Its People, Its History
with text by P.H. Newby, photographs by Fred J. Maroon
Abbeville Press, 264, 200 color illustrations pp., $39.95
By the time the Tutankhamun exhibition closes in San Francisco, it will have been seen by more than eight million people, almost all of whom had to apply for reserved tickets: the potential audience was probably twice as large again. Museum directors and their PR men have in the past decade become experts at what one critic nicely terms 'the techniques of hype and hoopla,' the hard sell of cultural packages, from the Chinese show of 1973 to this year's 'Pompeii AD '79': not surprisingly, since the windfalls that such happenings generate can be immense, and the 'Tut craze' is the biggest money-maker of the lot. The New Orleans Museum of Art, for instance, let it be known that 'a minimum of $69.4 million was pumped into the New Orleans economy' in no more than four months, as a direct result of the Tutankhamun exhibition being on view there.[1]
Review, 6327 words
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