Читать книгу A History of Ancient Egypt - Marc Van De Mieroop - Страница 23

Anyone with an interest in ancient Egypt is aware of the vast quantity of material that is available to a student of the culture. Many museums have an abundance of objects on display, numerous TV documentaries show a seemingly unlimited array of tombs, wall paintings, statues, and the like, and whoever travels to Egypt itself sees ancient remains almost everywhere. Writing is very prominent in all this material: the ancient Egyptians liked to carve and paint texts onto their monuments. A major temple was incomplete if it did not have texts and images on every surface. There are multiple ongoing projects with scholars copying all the inscriptions and relief scenes of particular temples and tombs. The University of Chicago has been doing so in the area of Luxor since 1924! This embarrassment of riches does not mean that every aspect of life is well documented, however, or that the sources are easy to use in historical research. Nor are they evenly spread over the millennia of Egyptian history. As I take writing as the historian’s primary source, I will focus my remarks here on the written record.