Nefertiti by Michelle Moran (New York: Crown, 2007). 480 pp., 1 map, 1 family tree, cloth, $24.95, ISBN 978-0-307-38146-0.
Reviewed by Jennifer Houser Wegner, Research Scientist in the Museum’s Egyptian Section and Co-Curator of Amarna: Ancient Egypt’s Place in the Sun.
The city of Philadelphia has recently played host to two exhibits focusing on Egypt’s Amarna Period and its aftermath (ca. 1353–1322 BCE). Penn Museum’s exhibit, Amarna: Ancient Egypt’s Place in the Sun, explores the period of time in which the Pharaoh Akhenaten, the husband of Nefertiti, dramatically altered the religion of Egypt, while The Franklin Institute’s Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs highlighted treasures from the tomb of the boy-king Tutankhamun who was responsible for restoring Egypt’s traditional religion after the death of his father, Akhenaten— Nefertiti was probably his stepmother.
The Amarna period is undeniably fascinating, and the characters that populate this era of Egyptian history—Amenhotep III, Queen Tiye, Akhenaten, Nefertiti, and Tutankhamun—are some of ancient Egypt’s most recognizable individuals. It is thus not surprising to find that Michelle Moran has penned a new historical novel based on the life and times of the legendary Nefertiti. While Tutankhamun and Akhenaten are perhaps better known historically than Nefertiti, the queen—the subject of the iconic and dazzlingly beautiful sculpted portrait discovered in 1912 at the site of Amarna—continues to inspire generations of authors, writers, and historians.
Who was this woman? Where did she come from? What was it like to be the wife of the iconoclast, Akhenaten? Did she truly believe in his religious revolution? How did she come to wield power almost on a par with her royal husband? Part of what makes the Amarna Period so interesting, and yet so frustrating,
to scholars and lay persons alike, is that there are no answers to most of these questions. We have dozens, if not hundreds, of images of the queen but very little insight into her origins, her motivations, or even what ultimately happened to her, prompting André Malraux to observe, “Nefertiti is a face without a kingdom.”
Moran gives us Nefertiti’s story from the perspective of Nefertiti’s younger sister, Mutnodjmet—a real-life figure. Depictions of the royal couple in both fiction and historical studies tend to present Akhenaten (and to a lesser extent, Nefertiti) in two diametrically opposed ways—either as a true believer or a heretic. Akhenaten can be hailed as a divinely inspired philosopher who introduced the concept of monotheism to the world, a poet, or a dreamer. Alternatively, he is seen as a dictatorial egomaniac who wielded tremendous political and religious power to his own advantage while seriously risking Egypt’s position on the world stage by disregarding international affairs and focusing only on his sole god, the Aten.
Moran clearly does not view Akhenaten in a positive light. Neither Akhenaten nor Nefertiti come across as sympathetic characters in this novel, where their religious revolution is driven by a self-serving desire to wrest control of the nation’s wealth away from the priesthood of Amun, the country’s preeminent deity prior to the reign of Akhenaten. In this novel Akhenaten’s Egypt is one that is ruled by a tyrant accompanied by his equally ambitious queen. The royal couple is self-absorbed and violent, and their actions stand in contrast to those of the long-suffering and dutiful Mutnodjmet. Moran has incorporated some interesting recent theories as to what may have brought about the ultimate collapse of Akhenaten’s “experiment,” and readers may feel a certain sense of dread as events unfold.
As an Egyptologist and a self-confessed Egyptophile, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and had trouble putting it down. The history presented in this work does not necessarily represent the current consensus among Egyptologists, but it makes for a good story and is clearly well-researched. Nefertiti should certainly appeal to fans of historical novels set in ancient Egypt such as those by Allen Drury, Margaret George, and the many excellent works by Pauline Gedge.
Edward P. Dozier: The Paradox of the American Indian Anthropologist by Marilyn Norcini (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2007). 208 pp., 11 illus, cloth, $45.00, ISBN 978-0-8165-1790-9.
Reviewed by Carroll L. Riley, Emeritus Distinguished Professor, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, and Research Associate, Museum of Indian Arts and Culture/Laboratory of Anthropology, Santa Fe, NM.
This is a biography of Edward P. Dozier, the second individual of Native American descent to obtain a Ph.D. in Anthropology. Norcini’s story of Dozier’s life and career is primarily chronological. After a brief introduction about the special difficulties faced by Indian anthropologists (the “Paradox” of the title) Norcini follows Dozier’s life, giving relatively even emphasis to childhood, early years, and the various stages of his professional career. The book ends with a chapter evaluating the impact on the Indian community of Dozier’s success, a chronological chart of major events of Dozier’s life, and a comprehensive bibliography of his works.
Dozier was born in the Tewa-speaking Pueblo of Santa Clara, New Mexico, on April 23, 1916, the eleventh and final child of Thomas S. Dozier, an Anglo-American teacher and Leocadia Gutierrez, a young Tewa woman. Dozier grew up speaking mainly Tewa and Spanish. After Thomas Dozier’s death, the family removed to Albuquerque and then Santa Fe, and Edward was schooled primarily in the English language. He graduated from high school in 1935 and began his college education at the University of New Mexico that same year.
After serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, Dozier returned to UNM in 1946. Parenthetically, Ed Dozier and I became friends during this period, first at UNM and then at UCLA where we both matriculated in the fall of 1948. Dozier completed his Ph.D. at UCLA in 1952 and quickly entered academic life. In 1953 he accepted a position at Northwestern University, moving to Illinois with his second wife Marianne Fink Dozier, and remained for several years. But Dozier always wanted to get back to the Southwest, so following a period of fieldwork in the Philippines, he accepted a professorship at the University of Arizona. During his later years, Dozier became very much involved in American Indian studies and also published copiously in Southwestern ethnology and ethnohistory and on the Kalinga tribe in the Philippines. His all-too-short life ended with a heart attack on May 2, 1971.
Marilyn Norcini has written a sympathetic but objective book. Her theme of the “man between two worlds” and his pioneering efforts to ease the path of later Indian scholars is very timely, even more so today than during Dozier’s lifetime. I have some minor criticisms; the book becomes a bit repetitive at times, and the final chapter perhaps could be shortened and simplified. The price is a bit steep (hardly the author’s fault), but my overall impression is of an extensively researched and a well-written work. Norcini is to be congratulated.
Gordon R. Willey and American Archaeology: Contemporary Perspectives, edited by Jeremy A. Sabloff and William L. Fash (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007). 256 pp., 1 map, 34 illus, cloth, $34.95, ISBN 978-0-8061-3805-3
Reviewed by Greg Borgstede, Cultural Researcher at the Cultural Heritage Center, U.S. Department of State.
The festschrift volume in archaeology has lost momentum in the past decade. Notable collections of articles honoring a distinguished member of the profession with historical contextualization, theoretical retrospective and impact, and inspired contributions has largely become a lost genre, given tightening publishing budgets and ever-increasing specialization. Certain broad-ranging and influential scholars continue to merit this honor, however, and this volume provides a useful and important contribution to understanding the legacy of Gordon R. Willey.
As demonstrated in this volume’s chapters, Gordon Willey fulfilled all the requisites for warranting an examination of his life and works in archaeology. Willey was truly an “American archaeologist”: he conducted field research in North, Central, and South America and had an impact—in data, interpretation, and theory—in all three areas. His influence was also global, particularly with respect to settlement pattern studies, and long-lasting. He trained students to continue his work in a manner, as a number of contributors state, which was guiding and supportive while not determinative or overbearing. As a testimony to his intellect, he proposed ideas and theories that still hold relevance and fodder for debate and research long after their first presentation.
The volume is composed of ten chapters, with an introduction and conclusion by the editors. The chapters are as eclectic as Willey’s career, in an explicit attempt to reflect or contemplate the wide-ranging interests of Willey himself. North and South America are addressed by Jerald Milanich (Florida) and Michael Moseley (Peru), Central America by Jeffrey Quilter (Panama) and Wendy Ashmore (Belize). Willey’s theoretical contribution is historically situated by Richard Leventhal and
Deborah Erdman Cornavaca, as well as by Ashmore and others. The remaining chapters analyze Willey’s work in the Maya area—with historical detail, building upon Willey’s ideas/interpretations, or both. These include chapters by Joyce Marcus (art and complex society), Gair Tourtellot and Norman Hammond (the site of Seibal), Prudence Rice (the Maya “collapse”), David Freidel, Hector Escobedo, and Stanley Guenter (the history of the Petén region), and Patricia McAnany (Mesoamerican ideology).
This slim volume manages to cover Willey’s major contributions to American archaeology. While none of the chapters are comprehensive (and none claim to be), the collection provides an excellent introduction to the work of this important figure, whether for the historian, the archaeologist, or the interested public. Further reading will be required to appreciate the depth of Willey’s influence, but this volume provides an excellent summary of the breadth of that influence. The University of Oklahoma Press should be applauded for taking on the less-than-popular festschrift format. But if anyone in American archaeology deserves the honor, it is Gordon Willey, as this book effectively demonstrates.
The Archaeology and Art of Ancient Egypt: Essays in Honor of David B. O’Connor, edited by Zahi A. Hawass and Janet Richards (Cairo: Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, 2007). 2 vols., 978 pp., 436 illus, paper, $49.50, ISBN 978-9-7743-7241-4.
Reviewed by James P. Allen, Wilbour Professor of Egyptology at Brown University, Providence, RI.
The Festschrift, a German term meaning a celebratory publication, was once a fairly rare phenomenon in Egyptological circles, but in recent years, it has become both more frequent and massive. The present work, in honor of David O’Connor, continues that expansive tradition.
Since 1995 David O’Connor has been the Lila Acheson Wallace Professor of Ancient Egyptian Art in the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, but his career for the previous 30 years was spent at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was both Professor of Egyptology and Curator of the Egyptian Section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. In that capacity he both inaugurated the university’s excavations at Abydos (initially in conjunction with Yale University) and trained several generations of Egyptologists. Two of his former students at Penn, now distinguished scholars in their own right, edited and published this festschrift. Zahi Hawass is Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, in charge of all archaeological work in Egypt; and Janet Richards is Associate Professor of Egyptology at the University of Michigan and director of one section of the continuing archaeological excavations at Abydos.
The title of this tribute reflects O’Connor’s two major Egyptological interests and the primary areas of his own substantial contributions to the field. The two volumes contain 67 articles by 79 scholars. Also included are a Preface by Hawass and an “archaeological biography” by Richards (both of whom also contributed separate articles), as well as a tribute by H. S. Smith, who was instrumental in persuading O’Connor to study Egyptology at Cambridge University. Richards’ biographical sketch is especially interesting not only for its text but also for a number of photographs of O’Connor and his colleagues from 1968 to the present. As is usual in such collections, however, the articles are technical in nature and directed to the field of Egyptology rather than the general public.
As befits the festschrift’s title, more than half of the articles concern either archaeology and architecture or art and material culture, but there are also studies of ancient Egyptian and Nubian history and society, texts, religion, anthropology, and the history and discipline of Egyptology itself, arranged alphabetically by the last name of the author. Seventeen of the articles were written by O’Connor’s former or current students, the rest by Egyptological colleagues from around the world (though all are in English). Appropriately, a quarter of the 67 articles concern Abydos, the site of O’Connor’s own excavations since 1967.
It is always difficult to do justice to a work such as this in a review. The review ends up either listing and providing abstracts of each article or singling out a few for more extensive commentary, to the detriment of the rest. Suffice it to say that each contribution is interesting, and even significant. Some present previously unpublished texts or works of art, while others break new ground in our understanding of ancient Egypt. This is clearly a work that belongs in the library of every Egyptologist and Egyptological institution.
The editors have done an admirable job of controlling the errors that are bound to creep into a work with so many individual contributors. The only major fault lies in the production: a few of the photographs (all black and white) and figures are not as clear as one would have liked, and there are printing problems with the text on some pages (at least in the copy reviewed here). A second edition is rumored to be in the works, which will include at least one more article that did not make it into this edition.
These few minor problems aside, this work is a major contribution to Egyptological literature and a worthy tribute to the scholar it honors.