Book Review extracts

Allen, Susan J.
Tutankhamun's Tomb: The Thrill of Discovery (Photographs by Harry Burton) (exh. cat.).
New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2006.
Art Museum Journal
Review by Stan Parchin

After a lengthy seven-year quest, British archaeologist Howard Carter (1873-1939) uncovered on November 4, 1922 the first of 16 rock-cut steps that led to the tomb of ancient Egypt's boy-king Tutankhamun (Dynasty 18, ruled ca. 1336-1327 B.C.). He breached the historic burial site's entrance 20 days later.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Theban Expedition was also digging in the Valley of the Kings. Carter recognized his need for a skilled photographer to record the 5,398 artifacts that awaited him. He sent an urgent cable from Cairo to New York's Albert M. Lythgoe (1868-1934), the museum's first Curator of Egyptian Art. Harry Burton (1879-1940), a master of photographic light, was dispatched with three colleagues to the site. His arrival began a decade-long collaboration with Carter.

Tutankhamun's Tomb: The Thrill of Discovery (The Photographs of Harry Burton) was published to accompany an exhibition of more than 70 mostly black-and-white photographs at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art (December 19, 2006-April 29-2007).

Beth Alpert Nakhai (ed.)
The World of Women in the Ancient and Classical Near East.
Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008.
ISBN 9781443800303.
Bryn Mawr Classical Review
Reviewed by Stephanie L. Budin

"Perhaps a decade ago, curious about the extent to which papers on women in the ancient Near East had been presented at the annual meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research, I looked into the program books dating from the early 1970s to the late 1990s. What I discovered astounded me: many more papers had been devoted to pigs than to women." (p. ix).

So begins Beth Alpert Nakhai's introduction to her edited volume on women in the ancient Near East (hereafter ANE). The nine papers in this short book range from Egypt to Mesopotamia to England geographically, Bronze Age to Edwardian chronologically. All were originally delivered at ASOR panels of the World of Women: Gender and Archaeology between the years 2000 to 2007 (p. xi). Twelve additional papers delivered at these panels and published elsewhere are listed at the end of the introduction.