Book Review: Aegyptiaca on the Island of Crete in Their Chronological Context: A Critical Review

Rosetta (Reviewed by Marsia Sfakianou Bealby)

Jacqueline Phillips, Aegyptiaca on the Island of Crete in Their Chronological Context: A Critical Review. Volume I and II (Contributions to the Chronology of the Eastern Mediterranean XVIII. Bietak, M. and H. Hunger [eds]). Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Austrian Academy of Sciences Press). December 2008.

Nearly seventy years have passed since young and enthusiastic J. D. S. Pendlebury, pioneer in Aegean/Egyptian relations, first studied artefacts of Egyptian origin found in Minoan and Helladic contexts. Pendlebury’s Aegyptiaca was a catalogue of Egyptian finds discovered on mainland Greece, Crete and the Aegean Islands, dating to Dynasty XXVI and earlier.[1] Despite being quite concise in format, and in perpetual need of updating and re-evaluation of its material, this significant work has inspired generations of researchers.[2]

In terms of Aegeo-Egyptian connections, Pendlebury’s Aegyptiaca has been the spark to start a fire of archaeological research in the twentieth century. In its own turn, Jacqueline Phillips’s recently published book, Aegyptiaca on the Island of Crete in Their Chronological Context: A Critical Review, is meant to keep this fire alive and brighter than ever.

The present study, which consists of two volumes, is based on the re-visited and updated PhD thesis of the author, submitted in 1991 to the University of Toronto.[3] Developed with care and commitment, it provides a catalogue of all known Egyptian and indigenous ‘Egyptianising’ material found in Bronze Age Minoan contexts, and also those without archaeological context, dating to Dynasty XX and earlier.