CANR
WORK TITLE: The Last Dynasty
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.tobywilkinson.net/
CITY: Suffolk
STATE:
COUNTRY: United Kingdom
NATIONALITY: British
LAST VOLUME: LRC 2015
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born March 25, 1969.
EDUCATION:Downing College, Cambridge, B.A. (first class honours); Christ’s College, Cambridge, Ph.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Egyptologist, educator, and writer. Clare College, Cambridge, England, instructor, 1999, fellow, 2003, director of development, 2003-10, fellow for development, 2022–; University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England, head of International Strategy Office, 2011-17; University of Lincoln, Lincoln, England, deputy vice chancellor, 2017-20; Fiji National University, Suva, Fiji, vice chancellor, 2021. University of Durham, Durham, England, Leverhulme Special Research Fellow.
AWARDS:Thomas Mulvey Prize, University of Cambridge; Antiquity Prize, Journal of Egyptian History; Lady Wallis Budge Junior Research Fellowship in Egyptology, 1993-97; Leverhulme Trust Special Research Fellowship; Honorary Research Fellowship in the Department of Archaeology, University of Durham; Hessell-Tiltman Prize, English PEN, 2011, for The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt; elected fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, 2017; fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
WRITINGS
Author of the foreword to Desert RATS: Rock Art Topographical Survey in Egypt’s Eastern Desert; Site Catalogue, Archaeopress, 2010. Member of editorial board, Journal of Egyptian History.
SIDELIGHTS
Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson was born in 1969 and became interested in Egypt at the age of five. He earned his degree in Egyptology from the University of Cambridge’s Downing College and completed his doctoral research at Christ’s College at Cambridge. He has received numerous fellowships during his career, including the prestigious Lady Wallis Budge Junior Research Fellowship in Egyptology and a Leverhulme Special Research Fellowship at the University of Durham. In 1999 he returned to Cambridge as a fellow of Clare College. His research has taken him to excavation sites in Buto and Memphis. An international expert on the early years of ancient Egyptian civilization, Wilkinson has traveled extensively giving lectures, presenting papers, and speaking as a guest on radio programs. He also serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Egyptian History and has appeared on BBC television as a consultant in Egyptian history.
Wilkinson published the first of many books on Egypt in 1996. State Formation in Egypt: Chronology and Society, focuses on the unification of Egypt around 3050 B.C. that led to economic, political, and cultural developments. During this period iconic cultural traits emerged, such as Egypt’s two-dimensional art, a divine king, and opulence of royal tombs. Wilkinson studied excavations of population centers in Upper (Southern) Egypt at the town of Naqada, city of Hierakonpolis, and royal tombs at Abydos, as well as events such as irrigation that allowed for cities to form, military invasions, dynastic interrelationships, and the founding of a new capital in Memphis.
“The specific agenda of his study is twofold: firstly, to refine the chronology of the period which will, secondly, allow a closer scrutiny of socio-economic change within Egyptian society during the period of state formation,” said Steven Snape in Antiquity. Snape added that Wilkinson “gives a clear outline of research on the chronology of the period.”
Wilkinson published Early Dynastic Egypt in 1999, a study of late Predynastic Egypt and the social, economic, and political changes in the Nile Valley that led to the rise of a complex society. Wilkinson has found that rather than a product of immigrants or invaders, the emergence of Egyptian civilization at the end of the fourth century B.C. was largely an indigenous phenomenon.
Unlike earlier writers who wrote when Egyptology was still relatively new, Wilkinson “is able to benefit considerably from the more anthropological approaches to state formation that have come to dominate our views of early complex societies,” according to Ian Shaw in Antiquity.
In 2010 Wilkinson published The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt: The History of a Civilisation from 3000 BC to Cleopatra, in which he uses a straight chronological approach to reveal the often brutal society where underfed and overworked peasants toiled under the iron fist of divine kings. Although the society enjoyed stability, rulers of this first true nation-state kept the people in check through fear, coercion, and military suppression when necessary. Food was offered to the gods while the people starved. Peasants were forced to build incredible monuments to their kings and gods. Retainers were likely sacrificed to the gods. Eventually, Wilkinson explains, the people revolted and fatally weakened the vast empire.
“This is a magnificent, illuminating and refreshingly readable overview of the entire phenomenon of ancient Egypt,” commented Steve Donoghue in the Washington Post. Referencing the 2011 protests in the streets of Egypt and mobilization of the people to change their government, Donoghue noted: “Wilkinson’s human, scheming pharaohs wouldn’t have recognized the cell phones, but they’d have known the boiling sentiments all too well.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor remarked that Wilkinson “does a tremendous job of condensing a wealth of material into a tidy volume for the armchair historian and general reader.”
In Genesis of the Pharaohs: Dramatic New Discoveries That Rewrite the Origins of Ancient Egypt, Wilkinson discusses the implications of petroglyphs he encountered in Egypt. He argues that the paintings were created by the ancestors of the Egyptian pharaohs. He suggests that the paintings depict their visions of the afterlife, as well as iconography that represents god and earthly pursuits, including hunting. Wilkinson connects the images he found with those that corresponded to the times of the pharaohs. Some similar representations were found in the tombs of the great kings of ancient Egypt.
Wilkinson includes definitions of terms that relate to ancient Egypt in The Thames & Hudson Dictionary of Ancient Egypt. Among the subjects of the entries are the various gods and goddesses the Egyptians worshipped, the major cities of the region, important archaeological digs, and the pharaohs and their family members. Wilkinson also explains the symbols found in hieroglyphs from the era. Joan W. Gartland wrote in Library Journal: “The A-to-Z entries cover a wide range of areas … and are well written, detailed, and succinct.” Another Library Journal contributor described the second edition of The Thames & Hudson Dictionary of Ancient Egypt as “the most comprehensive lexicon covering Egyptian and ancient Sudanese … terms.”
In 2014, Wilkinson published The Nile: A Journey Downriver through Egypt’s Past and Present. The book explains the importance of the river throughout Egypt’s history, beginning with prehistoric times and continuing through the present day. Wilkinson notes that trading centers cropped up around the river and that its floods allowed for the region’s agricultural industry to flourish. Later, the river drew famous visitors, including Napoleon, Thomas Cook, and archaeologists, including Lord Carnavon.
Anthony Sattin, contributor to the London Guardian, commented: “Visitors have been … sailing the Nile for pleasure for at least 2,000 years, and although several books have already told the story of their coming, some more thoroughly, Wilkinson’s eye for significant detail, his great curiosity about and affections for his subject, justify the retelling. But there are times, especially when the contemporary world intrudes, when his purpose in writing this book looks less constant than the river.” Rachel Newcomb asserted on the Washington Post: “One of the charms of this book is that the narrative moves comfortably among different time periods. … While the historical focus is broad, this approach works nicely, with the author smoothly guiding us on our Nile journey as he tells stories from the past.” “It’s dexterously done and rich in detail,” remarked Jeremy Seal in the London Telegraph. Seal also described the volume as “a book that is brilliant when its subject is the past, but insipid whenever it evokes the present. The curious result is that The Nile brings its readers closer to the nineteenth-century archaeologists and pharaohs than to Wilkinson’s anonymous crop of contemporary Egyptians.” “From its archaeological past to its populous present, Egypt has a marvelously acute expositor in Wilkinson,” opined Gilbert Taylor in Booklist. A contributor to Kirkus Reviews stated: “From Aswan to Cairo, encompassing deserts and oases, Wilkinson proves to be a pleasant, nondidactic, and always-informative travel companion.” In his review of The Nile for the Christian Science Monitor, Nick Romeo wrote “Wilkinson ostensibly describes a journey down the Nile from Aswan in the south to Cairo in the north. But every site he visits triggers a series of reflections on details spanning the entire history of Egyptian civilization. Covering everything from rock art made 7500 years before the pyramids to the lore of nineteenth-century tomb-robbers and archaeologists, Wilkinson deftly illustrates the striated density of Egypt’s long past.”
[open new]Wilkinson portrays a dramatic century of transformation in Egyptology as well as Egypt itself in his history A World beneath the Sands: The Golden Age of Egyptology. Western impressions of Egypt long revolved around “occult myths and medieval stereotypes,” as phrased by an Economist reviewer, until 1822, when French scholar Jean-François Champollion first deciphered hieroglyphics on the famed Rosetta Stone. Although Egyptians themselves had shown little regard for the nation’s archaeological history, turning ancient mud bricks into fertilizer and repurposing temple stones in factories, the British and French had developed a heated rivalry that was stoked by Napoleon and only intensified with Champollion’s discovery, which led to heightened efforts to excavate tombs and other sites. The Prussians spurred translation advances in the 1830s; the French found the elaborate Serapeum monument in 1850; and August Mariette was made director of the Egyptian Department of Antiquities in 1858. Into the twentieth century—with Egypt officially subjugated as a British colony from 1882 onward—foreigners dominated archaelogical digs, excluding local participation beyond menial labor, and whisked many of their finds away to Western museums. Finally by the discovery of King Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922, Egyptians had both embraced their past and, with nominal independence, regained control of historical sites, ancient artifacts, and the celebration of their own history.
A Publishers Weekly reviewer affirmed that Wilkinson “marshals a wealth of detail into a cohesive and entertaining narrative” in this “meticulous and vibrant account,” making for an “essential portrait” of the rediscovery of Egypt’s past. In the New York Times Book Review, Rosemary Mahoney admired Wilkinson’s prose in A World beneath the Sands as “so smooth and straight and unadorned” that his presence as narrator is almost undetectable: he “draws little attention to himself and only now and then opines. With another sort of story this could be considered a flaw. Here, it’s a strength. Wilkinson is a consummate historian. As such, he needs no histrionics or mood music to hold the reader’s attention or spin his tale along. He has mastered the facts with painstaking research and allowed them to speak for themselves.” Mahoney concluded that “the quiet yet salient revelation of Wilkinson’s study—and what makes the story of 19th-century Egyptology relevant now—is how the Anglo-French obsession with Egypt’s past and their frantic bid for control of its future gradually spurred the downtrodden modern Egyptians toward a newfound self-awareness and a galled desire for independence after nearly 2,000 years of foreign occupation and oppression.”
The particulars of Howard Carter’s discovery of King Tut’s tomb in 1922 offer the material for Wilkinson’s centennially timed monograph Tutankhamun’s Trumpet: Ancient Egypt in 100 Objects from the Boy King’s Tomb. With looting largely stemmed by the 1920s, most of the 5,000 objects and drawings found in Tutankhamun’s tomb—making it the most extensive archaelogical discovery in history—were entered into the historical record. Using 100 of these objects divided into ten categories as a framework, Wilkinson unspools the three millennia worth of history, from around 3000 BCE to 31 BCE, that made ancient Egypt the world’s longest surviving nation. With authority centered in the Nile Valley, government under pharaohs united the region and fended off martial challenges until Cleopatra surrendered to ancient Rome. The book includes dozens of photographs, including sixteen pages in color, displaying everything from throw-stick weapons and silica jewelry to beadwork sandals and ivory clappers, used to ward off evil spirits.
A Kirkus Reviews writer found that Wilkinson’s text “moves smoothly through the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms, inevitably emphasizing religion but not ignoring politics and war as well as the surprisingly well-documented daily lives of the people.” The reviewer hailed Tutankhamun’s Trumpet as “lucidly written” and “beautifully produced.”
The death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE left three of his generals to become kings of the lands he conquered, including Egypt, as Wilkinson relates in opening The Last Dynasty: Ancient Egypt from Alexander the Great to Cleopatra. Ptolemy I blended effectively into the Egyptian dynastic line, adopting local customs, cultivating the priesthood, and casting himself as heir to the pharoahs. There followed some fourteen other Ptolemies and seven Cleopatras over the next three centuries, with Rome growing increasingly powerful while Egypt was wracked with rebellions, wars, and murderous drama, until the seventh and most famous Cleopatra—opposite the likes of Pompey, Caesar, and Marc Anthony—allied with the losing side in Roman civil war. Where ancient histories around the world tend to focus on the ruling class and mythologies, which offer the majority of archaeological evidence, a Kirkus Reviews writer noted that Egypt’s tomb collections and arid climate make it a “glorious exception, with mountains of surviving papyri from rubbish dumps and necropolises. Wilkinson takes advantage to deliver a detailed account of its bureaucracy, culture, and daily life.” In The Last Dynasty the reviewer found Hellenistic Egypt to be “in expert hands.”[close new]
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
American Anthropologist, September 1, 2001, review of Early Dynastic Egypt, p. 845.
Antiquity, September 1, 1997, Steven Snape, review of State Formation in Egypt: Chronology and Society, p. 778; September 1, 2000, Ian Shaw, review of Early Dynastic Egypt, p. 731; December 1, 2001, N. James and Simon Stoddart, review of Early Dynastic Egypt, p. 888.
Baltimore Sun, March 13, 2011, Wendy Smith, review of The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt: The History of a Civilisation from 3000 BC to Cleopatra.
Booklist, June 1, 2014, Gilbert Taylor, review of The Nile: A Journey Downriver through Egypt’s Past and Present, p. 19.
Choice, March 1, 2000, S.M. Burstein, review of Early Dynastic Egypt, p. 1350.
Christian Science Monitor, June 11, 2014, Nick Romeo, review of The Nile.
Economist, October 17, 2020, review of A World beneath the Sands: The Golden Age of Egyptology, p. 72; June 3, 2023, review of Ramesses the Great: Egypt’s King of Kings.
Journal of African History, July 1, 2001, Jacke Phillips, “Egypt and Nubia,” p. 307.
Kirkus Reviews, December 1, 2010, review of The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt; May 15, 2014, review of The Nile; September 1, 2020, review of A World beneath the Sands; October 1, 2022, review of Tutankhamun’s Trumpet: Ancient Egypt in 100 Objects from the Boy King’s Tomb; March 1, 2025, review of The Last Dynasty: Ancient Egypt from Alexander the Great to Cleopatra.
Library Journal, December 1, 2005, Joan W. Gartland, review of The Thames & Hudson Dictionary of Ancient Egypt, p. 176; July 1, 2008, review of The Thames & Hudson Dictionary of Ancient Egypt, p. 108.
Middle East, October, 2021, review of Aristocrats and Archaeologists: An Edwardian Journey on the Nile, p. 1EE.
New York Times Book Review, December 6, 2020, Rosemary Mahoney, review of A World beneath the Sands, p. 67.
Publishers Weekly, August 3, 2020, review of A World beneath the Sands, p. 44; September 19, 2022, review of Tutankhamun’s Trumpet, p. 48.
Science News, June 28, 2003, review of Genesis of the Pharaohs: Dramatic New Discoveries That Rewrite the Origins of Ancient Egypt, p. 415; November 19, 2005, review of The Thames & Hudson Dictionary of Ancient Egypt, p. 335.
Washington Post, March 28, 2011, Steve Donoghue, review of The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt.
ONLINE
Bloomsbury website, http://www.bloomsbury.edu/ (January 1, 2010), author profile.
Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/ (February 15, 2014), Anthony Sattin, review of The Nile.
Telegraph, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ (February 21, 2014), Jeremy Seal, review of The Nile.
Random House website, http://www.randomhouse.com/ (August 1, 2011), author profile.
Toby Wilkinson website, http://www.tobywilkinson.net (October 10, 2025).
Wall Street Journal, http://blogs.wsj.com/ (March 13, 2011), Alexandra Cheney, “Toby Wilkinson on Ancient Egypt,” author interview.
Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ (July 18, 2014), Rachel Newcomb, review of The Nile.
Professor Toby Wilkinson
Toby Wilkinson first became interested in Egyptology at the age of five. He studied Egyptology at the University of Cambridge, graduating with a First Class Honours degree and winning the University’s Thomas Mulvey Prize. After completing his doctoral research at Christ’s College, Cambridge, he was elected to the college’s prestigious Lady Wallis Budge Junior Research Fellowship in Egyptology (previous holders of which include the eminent Egyptologists Harry Smith and Geoffrey Martin), which he held from 1993 to 1997. Following two years as a Leverhulme Special Research Fellow at the University of Durham, Toby Wilkinson returned to Cambridge in 1999. He is currently a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge.
An acknowledged expert on ancient Egyptian civilisation and one of the leading Egyptologists of his generation, Toby Wilkinson has given lectures around the world and his international reputation has led to invitations to contribute to other major collaborative projects. He has excavated at the Egyptian sites of Buto and Memphis. He is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Egyptian History and has broadcast on radio and television in the UK and abroad, including BBC’s Horizon and Channel 4’s Private Lives of the Pharaohs, and was the consultant for the BBC’s award-winning documentary on the building of the Great Pyramid. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and of the Royal Historical Society.
His books have been translated into 14 languages and include the critically acclaimed Early Dynastic Egypt (1999), Genesis of the Pharaohs (2003), The Thames & Hudson Dictionary of Ancient Egypt (2005), Lives of the Ancient Egyptians (2007), The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt (2010, New York Times bestseller and winner of the Hessell-Tiltman Prize), The Nile (2014), Writings from Ancient Egypt (2016), (with Julian Platt) Aristocrats and Archaeologists (2017), A World Beneath the Sands (2020), Tutankhamun’s Trumpet (2022), and Ramesses the Great (2023), and he edited the encyclopedia The Egyptian World (2007). He lives in Suffolk and Yorkshire.
Toby Wilkinson
Article
Talk
Read
Edit
View history
Tools
Appearance hide
Text
Small
Standard
Large
Width
Standard
Wide
Color (beta)
Automatic
Light
Dark
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Not to be confused with the Near Eastern archaeologist Tony Wilkinson.
Toby Wilkinson
FSA FRHistS
Born 1969 (age 55–56)
Nationality British
Awards Hessell-Tiltman Prize (2011)
Academic background
Alma mater Downing College, Cambridge
Christ's College, Cambridge
Academic work
Discipline Egyptology
Institutions
Christ's College, Cambridge
University of Durham
Clare College, Cambridge
University of Lincoln
Fiji National University
Website www.tobywilkinson.net
Toby Alexander Howard Wilkinson, FSA, FRHistS (born 1969) is an English Egyptologist and academic. After studying Egyptology at the University of Cambridge, he was Lady Wallis Budge Research Fellow in Egyptology at Christ's College, Cambridge (1993 to 1997) and then a research fellow at the University of Durham (1997 to 1999). He became a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge in 2003. He was Deputy Vice Chancellor (External Relations) at the University of Lincoln from 2017 to 2021, and then Vice Chancellor of Fiji National University from January 2021 to December 2021. Since 2022, he has been Fellow for Development at Clare College, Cambridge.
Wilkinson was awarded the 2011 Hessell-Tiltman Prize for his book The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt: the History of a Civilisation from 3000 BC to Cleopatra.
Early life
Wilkinson was born in 1969. He read Egyptology at Downing College, Cambridge.[1] He graduated with a first class Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree,[2] and was awarded the Thomas Mulvey Egyptology Prize.[1] He completed his Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree at Christ's College, Cambridge in 1993,[3] with a doctoral thesis titled "Egypt in transition: predynastic-early dynastic chronology and the effects of state formation".[4]
Academic career
Wilkinson's first academic position, from 1993 to 1997, was as Lady Wallis Budge Research Fellow in Egyptology at Christ's College, Cambridge. From 1997 to 1999, he was Leverhulme Special Research Fellow at the University of Durham.[3] After this he decided to change direction from academia.[5]
Wilkinson returned to Cambridge and became a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge in 2003.[6] He set up the college's development office, focusing on communications, fundraising and external relations, and served as director of development from 2003 to 2010.[5] He is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Egyptian History.[7] He is an honorary research fellow in the Department of Archaeology, University of Durham.[8] In July 2011, he became head of the International Strategy Office at the University of Cambridge. In this position, he developed the university's international strategy and helped facilitate international collaborations.[9]
In 2017, he became Deputy Vice Chancellor (External Relations) at the University of Lincoln.[10] In January 2021, he moved to the South Pacific to become Vice Chancellor of Fiji National University. However, in August 2021, it was announced that he was to step down in December 2021 due to "personal family reasons", and he subsequently returned to the United Kingdom.[11] In March 2022, it was announced that he would return to Clare College, Cambridge as Fellow for Development: he took up the appointment on 3 May 2022.[12] He was appointed as the bursar of Clare college in February 2025.[13]
Honours
In 2011, Wilkinson won the Hessell-Tiltman Prize, awarded to the best work of non-fiction of historical content, for his book The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt: the History of a Civilisation from 3000 BC to Cleopatra.[14]
On 3 March 2017, Wilkinson was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London (FSA).[15] He is also a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.[16]
Selected works
State Formation in Egypt: Chronology and Society (1996), British Archaeological Reports (BAR) International
Early Dynastic Egypt (1999), Routledge
Royal Annals of Ancient Egypt: the Palermo Stone and Its Associated Fragments (2000), Kegan Paul
Genesis of the Pharaohs: Dramatic New Discoveries That Rewrite the Origins of Ancient Egypt (2003), Thames & Hudson
The Thames and Hudson Dictionary of Ancient Egypt (2nd edition 2008), Thames & Hudson
Lives of the Ancient Egyptians: Pharaohs, Queens, Courtiers and Commoners (2007)
(Editor) The Egyptian World (2009), Routledge
The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt (2010). Published by Bloomsbury (UK) on 2 August 2010 and by Random House (USA) on 15 March 2011
The Nile: A Journey Downriver Through Egypt's Past and Present (2014), Knopf
Aristocrats and Archaeologists: An Edwardian Journey on the Nile (2017), The American University in Cairo Press
A World Beneath the Sands: The Golden Age of Egyptology (2020), W. W. Norton
Tutankhamun's Trumpet: The Story of Ancient Egypt in 100 Objects (2022), Pan MacMillan
Ramesses the Great: Egypt's King of Kings (2023), Yale University Press
The Last Dynasty: Ancient Egypt from Alexander the Great to Cleopatra (2025), W. W. Norton
In the Valley of the Kings
Foreign enthusiasts uncovered, pillaged and helped save ancient Egypt's glories
AT THE BEGINNING of the 19th century, Egypt's wondrous heritage was neglected. Ancient mud bricks were turned into fertiliser and temple stones repurposed in factories as the country's industries developed. Within 100 years, all that had changed. Children learned about the pharaohs; politicians visited their tombs. "Our nation today does not exist independently from the nation of our past," an Egyptian journalist wrote. "The nation is a single unbroken, unbreakable whole."
As Toby Wilkinson makes clear in his fascinating new history, this transformation was riddled with ironies. For if Egyptians ultimately came to love their pharaonic past, they had often been coaxed to do so by outsiders. Finally abandoning occult myths and medieval stereotypes about Egypt, Western academics and adventurers had scrabbled for the truth. In 1822 Jean-François Champollion, a French scholar, deciphered hieroglyphics, at last letting the pharaohs speak in their own tongue. By the 1920s his successors were reading letters by Heqanakht, a farmer who lived 4,000 years ago.
An exquisite bust of Nefertiti showed that the ancient Egyptians could produce stunning sculpture. Vivid tomb paintings suggested a dynamic people. No wonder that the Westerners who came to Egypt often fell in love with it. "It is so difficult to tear myself away from this place," exclaimed John Gardner Wilkinson, a British Egyptologist, in 1832--and he was not alone. Born into a comfortable family, Amelia Edwards was captivated by Egyptian landscapes; she wrote two books about the country and exhorted other Egyptologists to visit. Champollion adopted local dress and proudly drank Nile water, despite the risk of plague.
At the same time, some of the foreigners saw in Egypt and its treasures an occasion for imperialist chauvinism and an opportunity for pillage. As a popular Cairo saying put it: "The riches of Egypt are for the foreigners therein." European explorers battled for access to the best sites, nursing nasty personal rivalries, ingratiating themselves with Egyptian rulers and smuggling booty away to museums at home (one enterprising Englishman extracted his treasure from a guarded storeroom by tunnel). Unable to carry the Great Pyramid of Giza back to Berlin, a group of Prussians did the next best thing, singing their royal hymn in the burial chamber and scrawling a hieroglyphic ode to their king. Archaeology was not a science, commented a later writer--it was a vendetta.
But "A World Beneath the Sands" is more than a saga of foreigners in the desert--it also follows Egypt on its rocky path to the 20th century. Mr Wilkinson vividly evokes the slave markets and Bedouin attacks of the early 1800s and, later, tourist hotels and the Suez Canal (opened in 1869). New nationalist ideas were sometimes advanced by the same outsiders who hoarded Egyptian artefacts. So desperate was a French Egyptologist to keep German and British influence out of the Egyptian Museum, for example, that he hired locals for senior jobs instead, incidentally championing their advancement.
By the 1920s Egyptian officials were cancelling foreign excavation permits. Especially after the nationalist revolution three decades later, archaeology in the country was controlled by the locals. That was just and probably inevitable--yet for all their flaws, the foreigners achieved a lot. They liberated ancient Egypt from legend, proving it "every bit as innovative and sophisticated" as Greece and Rome.
A World Beneath the Sands.
By Toby Wilkinson.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2020 Economist Intelligence Unit N.A. Incorporated
http://store.eiu.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Pyramid schemes; Egyptology." The Economist, 17 Oct. 2020, p. 72(US). Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A638458847/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=99dce85a. Accessed 25 Sept. 2025.
Wilkinson, Toby A WORLD BENEATH THE SANDS Norton (NonFiction None) $30.00 10, 20 ISBN: 978-1-324-00689-3
A history of the relatively short period during which Egyptology “emerged from its antiquarian origins to emerge as a proper scientific discipline.”
More compressed than Jason Thompson’s recent multivolume history on the subject, Wilkinson’s latest spotlights the great French, English, and German scientists and adventurers who managed to crack many of the mysteries of ancient Egypt—notably, Jean-François Champollion’s “decipherment” of hieroglyphics in 1822. His achievement, writes the author, "allowed ancient Egyptian culture to emerge out of the fog of Classical myth and esoteric legend into the spotlight of serious scientific enquiry." After Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt (1798-1801) and the ensuing era of Muhammad Ali's brutal modernization of the country (until 1848), an "orgy of destruction" followed, as treasure seekers and some archaeologists were driven by “a desire to record and preserve Egypt’s ancient patrimony before it was lost forever.” In the 1830s, Prussian archaeologist Karl Richard Lepsius “took Egyptian philology to the next level, enabling, for the first time, the translation of running hieroglyphic texts as opposed to mere names and epithets.” In 1850, French scholar Auguste Mariette discovered the Serapeum monument under the sands of Saqqara, the most celebrated discovery since the Rosetta Stone; in 1858, Mariette was appointed director of the newly formed Egyptian Department of Antiquities. The momentous early 1880s, writes Wilkinson, saw the convergence of European discovery of Egypt and "Egypt’s discovery of itself." Earlier, in 1874, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York “acquired its first Egyptian objects.” When Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon started their excavation of the Valley of the Kings, ancient Egypt had assumed the status of "a complex and vibrant civilization." Refreshingly, Wilkinson dedicates a chapter to two women: Lucie Duff Gordon and Amelia Edwards, whose A Thousand Miles Up the Nile (1877) was published to great acclaim. The author also includes images, maps, and a timeline.
A lively survey by an eminence in the field.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2020 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Wilkinson, Toby: A WORLD BENEATH THE SANDS." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Sept. 2020. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A634467477/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=6c22be15. Accessed 25 Sept. 2025.
A World Beneath the Sands: The Golden Age of Egyptology
Toby Wilkinson. Norton, $30 (512p) ISBN 978-1-324-00689-3
Historian Wilkinson (The Nile) revisits the whirlwind of archaeological discoveries made in the Nile Valley between the 1822 decoding of the Rosetta Stone and the 1922 unearthing of King Tutankhamun's tomb, in this meticulous and vibrant account. He sketches how Napoleon's 1798 expedition into Egypt inaugurated an "intense Anglo-French rivalry" over the country and its artifacts, and documents the competition between British polymath Thomas Young and French scholar Jean-Franjois Champollion to decipher ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. Champollion won out, though the Rosetta Stone ended up in British hands--a foreshadowing of the British takeover of the French-built Suez Canal, and the country irself, in the 1880s. In between, Wilkinson highlights the achievements of Prussian explorer Karl Richard Lepsius, who made the first "systematic exploration" of the Great Pyramid of Giza, and Auguste Mariette, who discovered the Serapeum at Saqqara in 1851, among other Egyptologists. He also notes the devastating impact of "treasure-hunting," "slapdash excavation," and Egyptian ruler Muhammad Ali's modernization efforts on archaeological sites, and details novelist Amelia Blandford Edwards's campaign to "save Egypt's patrimony for future generations." Wilkinson marshals a wealth of detail into a cohesive and entertaining narrative. The result is an essential portrait of how the rediscovery of "[Egypt's] ancient past paved the way for its modern rebirth." Agent Jon Wood, RCW Literary. (Oct.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2020 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"A World Beneath the Sands: The Golden Age of Egyptology." Publishers Weekly, vol. 267, no. 31, 3 Aug. 2020, p. 44. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A632374709/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=959ee029. Accessed 25 Sept. 2025.
A WORLD BENEATH THE SANDSThe Golden Age of EgyptologyBy Toby Wilkinson
No civilization has visited itself upon the Western imagination as powerfully as that of ancient Egypt. With its fathomless mystery, its architectural majesty, its artistic inspiration, civic order and sheer volume of wealth, ancient Egypt has captivated us and compelled us not just to understand it but to possess it -- to literally grab our shovels, dig up its stuff and haul it home with us.
Who's ''us''? By all accounts just about everybody in history who found himself in Egypt while the digging was easy, and even long after Egyptian law made it difficult. The idea was that possession of a nice piece of ancient Egyptian art would lend a stamp of legitimacy -- a greater greatness, let's say -- to any empire or, indeed, any private back garden in Dorset. The Greeks pondered it, the Romans started it and various Europeans got awfully good at it. But, as the Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson demonstrates in his excellent new book, ''A World Beneath the Sands,'' nobody in history succumbed more feverishly to the compulsion to take hold of ancient Egypt nor succeeded at it more thoroughly than the British and the French.
Wilkinson's ambitious focus is the hundred years of Egyptology between Jean-Francois Champollion's groundbreaking deciphering of the Rosetta stone in 1822 and Howard Carter's sensational discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen in 1922. During that century of exploration and excavation the science of Egyptology was shaped as much by benevolent curiosity and genuine scholarly interest as by the cutthroat imperialist rivalry between Britain and France.
Both nations had a burning desire to best the other in the struggle to gain control of Egypt politically and archaeologically, and both used the Egyptian collections in their national museums -- the Louvre and the British Museum -- as the measure and symbol of their success. Whoever seized the biggest statues and tallest obelisks, whoever got the best and the most of Egyptian antiquity and lugged it home and filled their museum with it would be the de facto winner. Winner of what exactly isn't Wilkinson's present concern, but his evidence suggests it meant more than just colonial expansion or the crucial access to India that Egypt offered. The bitter contest was, it seems, as much pathological as it was practical.
Though the 19th century produced the most wondrous discoveries and greatest scholarly achievements in Egyptology, it was also an era of great hubris and pillage and greed, during which countless antiquities were lost, stolen or destroyed by reckless excavation, rapacious haste and the general indifference of the Egyptian leadership.
The quiet yet salient revelation of Wilkinson's study -- and what makes the story of 19th-century Egyptology relevant now -- is how the Anglo-French obsession with Egypt's past and their frantic bid for control of its future gradually spurred the downtrodden modern Egyptians toward a newfound self-awareness and a galled desire for independence after nearly 2,000 years of foreign occupation and oppression. ''As the West rediscovered Egypt,'' Wilkinson writes, ''so Egypt discovered itself.''
All the fascinating giants of Egyptology appear here. Some were brilliant scholars genuinely eager to advance the science of Egyptology and forge a deeper understanding of ancient Egypt, some were self-serving fortune-seekers who cared mainly about their own advancement, and some were both at once.
There's Champollion, who, on unlocking the Rosetta stone and revealing the secret of hieroglyphics after years of scholarly struggle, was so overcome with emotion and fatigue he collapsed to the floor in a faint. And Giovanni Battista Belzoni, the Italian strongman and one-time circus performer who in 1817, under the aegis of the British consul, managed to drag, float and sail the 2.7-meter-high, 7--ton bust of Ramses II all the way from Luxor to the British Museum. And the British Army officer Richard William Howard Vyse, who, with no previous training in archaeology, used gunpowder and dynamite to blast away at the Pyramids in search of an entrance, then bored a hole 27 feet deep into the back of the Sphinx hoping (in vain) to find a chamber within.
We learn too of the shrewd and influential French archaeologist Auguste Mariette, who in 1851 unearthed the fabulous Serapeum at Saqqara. Never mind that his excavations were illegal, that he produced fakes to placate antiquities inspectors, nor that he used grain sacks to smuggle hundreds of objects he found at the site and surreptitiously shipped them off to France. Though widely accused by his British competitors of theft and destruction in his excavations, in 1858 Mariette was appointed director of the newly founded Egyptian Antiquities Service, which he conceived, with the directive from Said Pasha to ''ensure the safety of the monuments.''
As for Ernest Alred Thompson Wallis Budge, when sent to acquire antiquities for the British Museum, he too bribed the police, bought stolen artifacts from illicit dealers, stole, smuggled and justified his actions in the same way countless archaeologists and amateur scavengers have justified theirs: ''The objects would have been smuggled out of Egypt all the same; the only difference would have been that instead of being in the British Museum they would be in some museum or private collection on the continent or in America.'' In other words, they would have ended up someplace quite like his own, and how, pray, could anybody want that? It's an amusing characteristic of all the players in these hundred years of excavation that every one of them claimed ample reason for removing antiquities from Egypt, legally or illegally, yet howled with outrage when anyone else did the same.
Where were the Egyptians when all this plunder of their heritage was taking place? They were there under the heels of their visitors, providing cheap or, when the labor was enforced, as it often was, free labor for the crushing work of archaeological excavation. In exchange they were characterized as ignorant, lazy, abject and shiftless. If they sought to make a few pence by pilfering a piece from an excavation site, they were severely punished.
The European stronghold on Egyptian archaeology was so firm that not until 1909 were Egyptian citizens of means allowed to sponsor formal excavations in their own country. As for the Egyptian leadership, from Muhammad Ali to King Fuad, few Egyptian leaders held the nation's antiquities in much regard; they blithely quarried ancient monuments for the stone to build modern factories and casually tossed precious objects to the British and the French in exchange for loans and political favors.
In 1912, a growing ripple of Egyptian nationalism became an outraged wave when the exquisite painted limestone bust of Nefertiti (''fresh as the day it had been made 35 centuries before'') was discovered at Amarna by a German excavation team and promptly removed to Berlin. ''More than the Rosetta stone,'' Wilkinson writes, ''or the Dendera Zodiac, the Luxor obelisk or Cleopatra's Needles ... the bust of Nefertiti came to represent for Egyptian nationalists the exploitation and appropriation of their history by foreigners -- a perennial insult that had gone on for more than a century.''
We hear a lot now about ''cultural appropriation,'' a term lately fired with reflexive ease at even the slightest cultural crossover. This, however, was a frenzied, long-term, all-out cultural heist, complete with government-funded pistols and getaway car -- one of many in the greater schemes of world history.
This is a riveting, sometimes appalling story. I think it's important to say that Wilkinson's prose style is so smooth and straight and unadorned as to be nearly nonexistent. In fact, as I closed the book I wondered fleetingly in exactly whose company I had just spent hundreds of pages, for as a writer, Wilkinson draws little attention to himself and only now and then opines. With another sort of story this could be considered a flaw. Here, it's a strength. Wilkinson is a consummate historian. As such, he needs no histrionics or mood music to hold the reader's attention or spin his tale along. He has mastered the facts with painstaking research and allowed them to speak for themselves. Rarely do facts speak this clearly.
Rosemary Mahoney is the author of six books, including ''Down the Nile: Alone in a Fisherman's Skiff.'' She is at work on a memoir. A WORLD BENEATH THE SANDS The Golden Age of Egyptology By Toby Wilkinson Illustrated. 510 pp. W.W. Norton & Company. $30.
CAPTION(S):
PHOTO: The portrait bust of Queen Nefertiti at the Neues Museum in Berlin. (PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDREAS RENTZ/GETTY IMAGES)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2020 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Mahoney, Rosemary. "Sphinx." The New York Times Book Review, 6 Dec. 2020, p. 67(L). Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A643880685/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=0f77233d. Accessed 25 Sept. 2025.
Aristocrats and Archaeologists
An Edwardian Journey on the Nile By Toby Wilkinson and Julian Platt Published by I.B. Tauris ISBN: 9789774168451 Price [pounds sterling]24.95 hardback
A collection of letters in a small painted box passed down through three generations of a London family is the starting point for a vivid account of a three-month journey up and down the Nile in a bygone age. The letters, like a time capsule, bring to life a lost world of Edwardian travel and social mores, of Egypt on the brink of the modern age, of the great figures of Egyptology, of aristocrats and archaeologists. In 1907/08 Ferdinand Platt (known to his family as Ferdy) traveled to Egypt as personal physician to the ailing 8th Duke of Devonshire-one of the giant statesmen of the late Victorian age-and his family party, recounting his adventure in letters to his young wife in England. Throughout the journey Ferdy not only reported on the sights of the country around him, with his amateur Egyptologist's eye, and the people he met along the way (including Howard Carter and Winston Churchill) but also recorded his private thoughts and intimate observations of a formal and stratified society, soon to be witness to its own extinction. Introduced by Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson and Ferdy's great-nephew Julian Platt, the letters open an intriguing window onto travel in golden age of Egyptology.
Share this:
https://www.themiddleeastmagazine.com/travel/book-review-aristocrats-and-archaeologists/
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2021 IC Publications Ltd.
http://www.icpublications.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Aristocrats and Archaeologists." The Middle East, Oct. 2021, p. 1EE. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A683116729/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=0427f543. Accessed 25 Sept. 2025.
Toby Wilkinson. Norton, $37.50 (496p) ISBN 978-0-393-53170-1
Egyptologist Wilkinson (A World Beneath the Sands) brings ancient Egypt to life with a detailed examination of 100 items from Tutankhamun's tomb. Timed to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Howard Carter's excavation of the tomb, which ignited global interest in ancient Egyptian antiquities, art, architecture, and history, the book divides the objects into 10 categories covering life in the Nile Valley, including geography, monarchy, piety, and mortality. Ranging from the mundane to the extraordinary, the items include throw sticks, a weapon associated with ancient Libyans; a piece of jewelry made from natural silica glass found in Egypt's Western Desert; leather and beadwork sandals and shaving equipment; and a painted box depicting Tutankhamun hunting gazelles and fighting against the Syrians and the Nubians. The abundant resources of the rich Nile Valley are prominently displayed, as are exotic items imported from distant lands. Wilkinson's expert discussions touch on each item's significance to Tutankhamun and what they reveal about daily life in ancient Egypt. For example, a pair of ivory clappers--used to ward off evil spirits in birthing pavilions--highlights the dangers of childbirth for elite and ordinary Egyptians. Accentuated with black-and-white and color photos, this is an informative and immersive survey of the ancient world. Illus. (Nov.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2022 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Tutankhamun's Trumpet: Ancient Egypt in 100 Objects from the Boy King's Tomb." Publishers Weekly, vol. 269, no. 39, 19 Sept. 2022, pp. 48+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A720470574/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=e755082a. Accessed 25 Sept. 2025.
Wilkinson, Toby TUTANKHAMUN'S TRUMPET Norton (NonFiction None) $35.00 11, 1 ISBN: 978-0-393-53170-1
A fresh history of King Tut and his world, generously illustrated and lucidly written.
The ancient Egyptian obsession with burying important people in elaborate tombs has rewarded archaeologists with more Egyptian artifacts than those found for all other ancient civilizations combined. British journalist Wilkinson, author of many books on this subject, including A World Beneath the Sands, builds this expert history on items recovered from Tutankhamun's tomb, which, only lightly looted, contained more than 5,000 well-preserved objects and drawings, making it "the greatest archaeological discovery of all time." Following tradition in the genre, the author includes a history of Egyptology, initially a sophisticated form of looting in which European antiquarians snapped up objects for their collections. By the 19th century, scholars had solidified the study of ancient Egypt, and the establishment of the Antiquities Service (by the British, who ruled Egypt) produced a steady stream of discoveries, capped by the bombshell of Howard Carter's 1922 opening of Tutankhamun's tomb. Wilkinson writes that the early rulers of the Nile Valley were the first humans to exercise authority over a geographically extensive state, beginning around 3000 B.C.E. The pharaonic government endured unchanged--though often challenged--for three millennia until Cleopatra surrendered to Rome in 31 B.C.E. It remains the longest-lived nation in history; as the author notes, "a greater span of time separated the Great Pyramid from Cleopatra than separates her from our own age." Even better, artifacts include innumerable written documents because papyrus preserves better than paper. Uniquely blessed with material, scholars have had no trouble filling multivolume tomes on ancient Egypt, but readers will have no regrets at the end of this one. Beginning not with "prehistoric" but "predynastic" people who settled in the river valley, he moves smoothly through the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms, inevitably emphasizing religion but not ignoring politics and war as well as the surprisingly well-documented daily lives of the people. The book includes 50 black-and-white photos and 16 pages of color.
A well-written, beautifully produced piece of ancient history.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2022 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Wilkinson, Toby: TUTANKHAMUN'S TRUMPET." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Oct. 2022. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A719983050/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=0de8736c. Accessed 25 Sept. 2025.
Ramesses the Great. By Toby Wilkinson. Yale University Press; 223 pages; $26 and £18.99
Unlike Alexander or Frederick , Ramesses the Great did not earn his sobriquet through feats of arms. His most famous military engagement—the battle of Kadesh in 1274BC—ended in a bloody draw. Making the best of a murky situation, his propagandists celebrated his personal courage, but they could not conceal how close he had come to disaster. Ramesses had walked into a trap set by Hittite spies, who deceived him into believing their main force was many miles away.
If greatness is attached to Ramesses II's name, it is in large part because he insisted on telling the world—repeatedly and on a massive scale—just how great he was. Over the course of his 66-year reign he excelled both as a builder and as a self-promoter, which amounted to much the same thing. As Toby Wilkinson, a prizewinning author and Egyptologist, chronicles in this compact and highly readable biography, Ramesses sought to dominate the landscape through "quantity rather than quality, durability rather than finesse".
His efforts left an impression on both contemporaries and future generations. He not only enlarged the magnificent temples dedicated to the gods at Karnak and Luxor, but initiated vast new complexes, including the memorial temple known as the Ramesseum and the temple complex at Abu Simbel, carved deep into sandstone cliffs. Whether appropriating an earlier pharaoh's project or initiating one of his own, Ramesses's busy sculptors advertised their employer's piety and achievements. They made sure he was a looming presence through enormous statues, some of which were as high as 90 feet (27 metres) tall. The ruins of one such colossus inspired Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "Ozymandias" , a meditation on the transience of earthly glory (whose thesis its subject would surely have rejected).
Though he was brought up to believe himself a deity, Ramesses's bombast was not simply a matter of ego. "For all his vainglory, Ramesses seems to have been a pragmatist," Mr Wilkinson writes. Projecting confidence was an essential part of the job and a political necessity, since neither his own subjects nor foreign rivals were inclined to reward humility. "His Majesty was a youthful master," his poets bragged, "vigorous and without equal."
In fact, Ramesses was probably overcompensating. It is thought that his grandfather, Ramesses I, had been a lowly stablemaster before he rose through the military ranks to become the chosen successor of Pharaoh Horemheb. Given these plebeian origins, Ramesses calculated that ostentatious displays were necessary to remind his subjects that he was not only divinely appointed, but a god incarnate.
Ramesses apparently regretted the fact that his résumé included no clear-cut military triumph—the frequency with which the battle of Kadesh was cited on his monuments suggests a nagging sense of martial potential unfulfilled. But it reflects well on his statesmanship that he managed to turn stalemate into profit, his greatest deficit contributing to his greatest success. "A peace dividend," Mr Wilkinson observes, "would be Ramesses's freedom to indulge in his favourite pastime, building on a grand scale."
The author succeeds in bringing this distant age to life through telling detail and insightful analysis, though the man at the centre inevitably remains something of an enigma. Whenever he can, the author takes advantage of opportunities to peer beneath the mask. The "attention lavished by Ramesses on his chief wives suggests a genuine fondness," he says, and offers a rare glimpse "of his true character and personality". But, as with almost everything else in his life, this fondness also served to bolster his status, conferring a kind of immortality through the more than 100 children he sired. Even in the bedchamber it was impossible to separate personal preference from raison d'état.
For more on the latest books, films, TV shows, albums and controversies, sign up to Plot Twist , our weekly subscriber-only newsletter
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2023 Economist Intelligence Unit N.A. Incorporated
http://store.eiu.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Ramesses the Great was a superb self-promoter." The Economist, 3 June 2023. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A751994188/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=1a10efd2. Accessed 25 Sept. 2025.
Wilkinson, Toby THE LAST DYNASTY Norton (NonFiction None) $37.99 4, 8 ISBN: 9781324052036
Seven Cleopatras and 15 Ptolemies who ruled until the Romans took over.
Egyptologist Wilkinson, author of 13 books on his specialty, begins his latest with Alexander the Great's 323 B.C.E. death, after which three of his generals made themselves kings of Macedonia, the Seleucid Empire (the Middle East and west Asia), and Egypt. There follows a compelling three-century history of the colorful Hellenistic period. Of the generals, Egypt's Ptolemy I was probably the most competent. Sensibly, he adopted Egyptian religious and bureaucratic customs, cultivated the priesthood, and portrayed himself as a legitimate heir to the pharaohs. His son and grandson (Ptolemy II and III) extended the kingdom's borders, secured its prosperity, and fostered scholars, establishing it as a great power with its capital, Alexandria, rivaling Athens as a center of learning. One problem is that Greeks followed them to Egypt in great numbers, forming a privileged minority that provoked increasing resentment. Another is that Rome had grown powerful by Ptolemy III's 222 B.C.E. death, and his successors did not measure up. The arrival of the first Cleopatra in 194 B.C.E. did not improve matters. Although she exerted considerable power (Egypt, unlike Greece, had no objection to female rulers), the nation was wracked by murderous dynastic quarrels, rebellions, unsuccessful wars, and increasing pressure from Rome. The seventh and best-known Cleopatra ruled 51 to 30 B.C.E. and dealt successfully with powerful Romans (Pompey, Caesar, Marc Anthony) before choosing the wrong side in Rome's civil war. Ancient histories emphasize rulers, wars, and gods because that's the evidence that survives in inscriptions, monuments, and artifacts. With its tomb obsession and desert climate that preserves organic materials, ancient Egypt is a glorious exception, with mountains of surviving papyri from rubbish dumps and necropolises. Wilkinson takes advantage to deliver a detailed account of its bureaucracy, culture, and daily life.
Hellenistic Egypt in expert hands.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Wilkinson, Toby: THE LAST DYNASTY." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Mar. 2025. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A828785289/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=1404f124. Accessed 25 Sept. 2025.