A Dictionary of Ancient Egypt
"A Dictionary of Ancient Egypt"
Margaret Bunson
A Dictionary of Ancient Egypt was written by a woman named Margaret Bunson. Maragaret Bunson is an art history professor with a "lifelong interest in Egypt," and she did all her own illustration work instead of using copies of extant art like most Egyptological resources do, so I didn't hold this book up to the standards that I would, say, something from Yale University Press; though it was published by Oxford University Press....
However, even as a "popular" text, this one's got some serious problems. First of all -- and maybe it's just my bone to pick as an editor -- it's filled with typos and reference problems (a big one: Under Nile, she states that there are 10 cataracts, yet under Cataracts, there are only six)....
After that come the bigger errors, like the page that shows a drawing of Ptah, Sekhmet, and Nefer-tem with the label "The Heliopolitan Triad," when the accompanying text on Heliopolis states (correctly) that Heliopolis had a Netjer-system of Nine (the Ennead), being Tem and His family; and that the three on the next page were/are the Triad of Memphis....
...and also, just something I've come to enjoy not seeing in historical books, which is a lot of conjecture. Bunson does well enough in most of the book putting forth her information in a straightforward and unbiased form, but every once in a while and oddly enough, more often as you get the end of the book, she starts engaging in some real conjecture. For example, in the entry on Senenmut (Pharaoh Hatshepsut's confidante and possible/probable consort), she notes that it's controversial and that Senenmut might either have been a Hatshepsut puppet or he could have been pulling the strings himself....but then at the end of that entry she states that his depiction is with a "cunning face". Excuse me, but who's judging...and what makes one's face cunning? I think Akhenaten's got a pretty cunning face, too, but from what we know about him, he didn't do much but sit around Akhetaten and write nice poetry.
A book which could have been a rather useful quick-read reference has turned out to be yet another mass-market, mistake ridden disappointment. I do hope Bunson corrects her errors in a second edition. This could be a nice addition to the non-scholarly library if it weren't unreliable in spots.
- Rev. Tamara L. Siuda