A Traveller's History of Egypt

 Long in advance of actually traveling there, I chose A Traveller’s History of Egypt by Harry Ades as being a way to prepare myself for the incredible and very long history of Egypt. It did take me some months to plow through the material which is written in a timeline as would be any good history textbook. It begins before history was recorded to the present time. I found myself reading a couple chapters, then putting it down for other reading material, and picking it up again. I just finished the last page when I’m only a week from beginning my journey. Ades book was first published in 2007, and it is a comprehensive yet concise history of the country.

 

The book included prehistoric times reaching back to 33,000,000 BCE. (BCE stands for “before the common era,” and is an accepted way of dating things. Much of the non-Christian world objects to AD and BC. AD refers to Anno Domini, “in the year of the Lord” and BC is simply “before Christ.” The BCE/CE system avoids a religious designation and CE simply refers to the “common era.” 1 CE would refer to what was probably Christ’s fourth or fifth year of life.)

 

It was around 3000 BCE that the rules of Upper Egypt took control of Lower Egypt, but how that occurred remains mostly unknown. It was about that same time that the first evidence of writing was found. It was over the next millennium that writing really developed and Egypt experienced its first dynastic period. Ades catalogued the various rules of Egypt, noting there were 31 dynasties. The 31^st dynasty of Alexander the Great was the beginning of the Ptolemaic period in 332 BCE. The Roman Period lasted from 30 BCE under Augustus to 395 CE, the last Roman emperor having been Theodosius I. (It was in 401CE that the Visigoths sacked Rome.) The author took the reader through the Byzantine Period followed by the Arab Period, the Malmuk Period, and the Ottoman Period which ended with World War I in 1914. There was also a French Occupation by Napolean from 1798 to 1801, the Dynasty of Muhammad Ali from 1805 to 1953. The British Occupation began in 1883 and lasted until 1953 when Egypt was declared a republic. Ades continued the political history of the county under Nasser, Sadat and finally Mubarak who was in office in 2007 time this book was published.

 

Simply put, if you’re interested in an excellent history of Egypt, this is the book for you.