Life in Ancient Egypt - Adolf Erman
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| Life in Ancient Egypt |
The need of a popular work on the manners and customs of Ancient Egypt has long been felt by the English public. Herr Erman supplied this need in Germany through the publication of his Aegypten, but no English scholar has attempted to fill this gap in Egyptian literature since the time of Wilkinson. In light of modern discoveries
Wilkinson's valuable book, as far as the letterpress is concerned, has now long become obsolete; the illustrations on the other hand will always remain a mine of wealth to every writer on this subject. In the present work, for instance, the low price of the German edition forbade the introduction of many original drawings, and Herr Erman, who chose the illustrations especially to amplify and explain the text, found that the three works most useful to him for this purpose were the Manners and Customs, by Wilkinson, the Denkmaler, by Lepsius, and L'Histoire de lArt, by Perrot-Chipiez.
With regard to the text, finding little to help him in the work of previous scholars, Herr Erman for several years devoted all the time he could spare from his official duties to original research on the subject.
The two works he mentions as having been of special service to him are Lepsius' Denkmaler and The London Select Papyri; in fact, he would almost regard the present work as a commentary on those great publications. A list of quotations from these works is given at the end of this edition. The author has confined himself to the treatment of those periods of ancient Egyptian history which have been styled the "Old Empire,"
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