Description

The most lasting achievement of the German Egyptologist Heinrich Karl Brugsch (1827-94) is perhaps his work on the Egyptian demotic script, which had been relatively neglected since Champollion's death. This two-volume illustrated history of Egypt, 'derived entirely from the monuments', was first published in an English translation (by H. D. Seymour, from the 1876 first German edition, and edited by Philip Smith) in 1879. Brugsch brings to bear his wide experience of the archaeological sites together with his linguistic expertise, and deliberately eschews later Greek and Roman accounts of Egypt. Volume 2 covers the period from the Nineteenth Dynasty, the time of the empire's widest extent under Seti I and Rameses II, through the later decline and disintegration, with ruling dynasties from Nubia and Assyria, to the Persian conquest in 525 BCE. An appendix discusses the biblical account of Exodus in the context of Egyptian material remains.