Following Odysseus Not the end of the world Amarna city of light ...

California. A body dedicated to the conservationand documentation of the RoyalTombs of Thebes, many of its ideas havebeen taken up. This resulted in the ThebanMapping Project. Now run by the AmericanUniversity in Cairo, the project provides acomprehensive database of Thebes and hasan extensive website.Today Romer is still publishing reportsstemming from this early expedition. Vividmemories of those early days also remain:‘The tombs were entirely beautiful, quietand dark, with the scent of cedarwood inthem,’ he says. Since then, Egyptian archaeologyhas evolved considerably.‘It has entirely changed from the dayswhen I first went there. Then it was largelysand-shovelling to recover more inscriptions.Now there are professionally traineddirt archaeologists digging difficult siteswith great skill to discover the ways of lifeof the ancient people. They are slowly writinga new history for ancient Egypt.’Nonetheless, funding is now more difficultto obtain and the situation in Egypthas greatly changed. ‘New excavationhas been stopped in Upper Egypt – which isactually no bad thing, as those sites requiremore conservation than exploration,’he comments.Other developments also cause him concern.‘Parts of Egyptology have becomefilled with unsuitable jargon from otheracademic disciplines. Introducing mockscientificjargon into what is fundamentallya humanistic discipline has led to parts ofa lovely old subject becoming nastily politicised,ancient history employed to providea pedigree for the modern Western world,’he says. One chilling example in his bookis where great tombs were referred to asexamples of ‘the conspicuous consumptionof prestige commodities by an elite’.His favourite figure from the early days ofarchaeology, he says, is Flinders Petrie.‘He was a crusty individualist who virtuallyinvented Egyptian archaeology. He wasusually irascible, often wrong, but upfrontwith his personal opinions, an incrediblyhard worker who had something interestingto say about everything he came across– and certainly he was a lover of old Egypt.’John Romer has proved to be that too andhas been rewarded, he says, by embracingthe country as it is today.‘Village life in modern Egypt has had ahuge effect upon me – not because I thinkpeople there today live like ancient Egyptians,but simply because they have shown mebeautiful and viable alternatives to myWestern way of life. The Egyptian landscape,too, has had a profound effect upon me. I’mamazed at how many European and USscholars never bother to visit the countrieswhich they spend their lives studying.’Working on his books and televisiondocumentaries allows him to immersehimself in a range of diverse subjects. TheMinerva November/December 2012documentaries in particular, which includeAncient Lives, Testament, The Valley of theKings and Byzantium: The Lost Empire,have been demanding and intellectuallybracing.‘I want to know more about things thanI do already, and there’s nothing like writinga television series to discover the gaps inyour knowledge of a subject,’ he insists. ‘It’sa tremendous amount of work. But workingon Bible history, Hellenism and Byzantiumhave been very useful to my work withancient Egypt too. Like modern Egypt, theyhave shown me other ways of being besideslife in the modern West and other waysof approaching ancient history as well –Egyptology is very compartmentalised.’There are common elements in the subjectshe has chosen, as he explains: ‘They’reall based in the Eastern Mediterranean, theyall start from the assumption that the pastwas very, very different from today, andthey all deal in arts and crafts that have hadextraordinary longevity. To that extent, Ithink that they’re all linked to my havingmade stained glass windows, too.’He was prompted to write his latest book,A History of Ancient Egypt: From the FirstFamers to the Great Pyramid, by a belief thatpeople like himself, who have been workingon ancient Egyptian material for some time,should set down their vision of the place. Amajor deficiency of Egyptology is, he says,that there are no up-to-date accounts of theentire civilisation written by a single voice.‘The problem with history by committee isthat there is no coherent vision of the subject.I think it’s a good discipline to work out ideasright down to the point where they becomenarratives that anyone can understand. It’smuch harder than writing academic articles,which only have to make sense to a few.’His book is the first consistent accountof Egypt’s early history, as opposed to adescription of the surviving remains strungtogether on a single time-line. It starts withan absorbing account of the exploration ofsome of the earliest excavated settlementsalong the Nile. Where did these people comefrom? He says he tries not to speculate:‘People “come out of nowhere” becausethey come and go so easily from the archaeologicalrecord. As far as the first inhabitantsof Egypt are concerned, I suppose it dependswhether or not you follow the popular “outof Africa” scenario for modern humans. Ifyou do, perhaps there’s a case for sayingthat some people travelling north out of theRift Valley decided to go no further. As tothe first farmers, they could either have beenthe descendants of those same peoples, orsettlers from the Levant and Anatolia whoalready had developed the technologies offarming. That they skilfully and quicklyadapted the rhythms of rain-irrigated economiesto that of the Nile Valley flood plainshows great practical knowledge of the localenvironment. Perhaps, as with almost everythingelse that happened in the distant past,we’ll never know.’Romer does, however, disagree with someof the popular ideas about the Egyptian pharaohs:‘They weren’t despots and they didn’tenslave people,’ he maintains. ‘As to slavery,it seems to me that in its present usage, theconcept revolves around money and propertyvalues, neither of which were aroundin ancient Egypt – nor incidentally, was themodern concept of freedom.’One of his favourite projects was AncientLives, a series he made in the 1980s about avillage of artists in ancient Egypt.‘It was a delight to make and people stillremember those films – parts of their scenarioare now on the Luxor tourist circuit,although at that time no one could haveforeseen the tourist tidal wave to come.’He is now engrossed in writing a second,self-contained volume on the later history ofancient Egypt (due for publication in 2014)at his base in Tuscany, where he and Bethhave lived for many years. ‘We’ve grown tolove the country and its culture and we’vebeen here so long now that when I land atRome or Pisa I feel I’m coming home.’Does he feel that there is a growing interestin history and archaeology?‘Yes, I suppose there is, although sometimesI think that it’s a funny sort of interest.Classics, for example, always makes methink of Arnold of Rugby and Billy Bunter.Let’s hope it’s not all nostalgia for an agethat never was, but a fascination for a pastthat was remarkable, fresh and interestingwith something new to teach us.’His work has undoubtedly fired the imaginationof readers and television audiences.‘Every so often someone sends me a thesisor a book they’ve written with a note tellingme that something I’ve done has encouragedthem to take up their present profession,’John Romer tells me with evident and welldeservedsatisfaction. nA History of Ancient Egypt: From theFirst Farmers to the Great Pyramid byJohn Romer is published in hardbackby Allen Lane at £25.17