REVIEW BY ANNA GARNETT
The Cambridge Elements: Ancient Egypt series delves into wider Egyptological themes and debates in fresh ways, beyond traditional approaches. Specialist authors collate primary source materials to illustrate complex themes in a way that readers can easily understand. In that spirit, this short volume explores the theme of famine in ancient Egypt through the lens of social memory.
Drawing on a range of historical sources covering thousands of years of Egyptian history, from the pharaonic to the Ottoman periods, the author investigates how individual memories of communal tragedies are transmitted into collective social memory, and how this is reflected in modern society today. An excellent illustration of this idea is provided in the form of the 1918-1920 ‘Spanish flu’ global pandemic: why were the details and the impact of this disaster largely erased from public memory over the course of a century, until parallels began to be made during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic? Without continued transfer of the details of such disasters in collective memory, they will always take us by surprise. This is something about which the ancient Egyptians were acutely aware.
The author explains how the ancient Egyptians anticipated social upheaval and tragedy even during times of relative peace and prosperity, and aimed to mitigate this through writing down their memories (witness testimony and literature), warning others (prophecy) and undertaking rites of remembrance (revisiting). The reader is presented with a fascinating array of primary sources. With a key focus on ancient Egyptian literature, the author’s innovative approach weaves in such diverse comparative material as medieval European written and pictorial sources, Biblical stories, modern Egyptian street art, and photographs of the Siege of Leningrad during World War II.
