PAULA ALEXANDRA DA SILVA VEIGA, Health and Medicine in Ancient Egypt: Magic and Science. BAR International Series 1967. Oxford, Archaeopress, 2009. ii + 80 pp. ISBN 978–1–4073–0500–4. £27.00

Abstract

When I initially got this book I thought of how nice and useful it would be to acquire a new work concerned with the ancient Egyptian Medicine, examined both through its scientific and magical (or religious) components. However, from the very first pages the feelings of enthusiasm have been suddenly transformed into unpleasant feelings and thoughts related to the great hastiness and carelessness with which this book has been (not written) but compiled. In general the reader gets an immediate impression of scrap-paper notes put unscrupulously together, of hastiness, of careless and erroneous writing, and he/she is bombarded from the very beginning with a great number of flaws and unacceptable errors, the most significant of which we are going to pre sent later on, after a short synopsis of the contents. One gets the impression that although the author knows her subject well, she fails to present it in the most perfect and scientifically approved way. There are, for instance, many errors in both the text and the footnotes, as well as in the Bibliography, that is not only orthographic and syntactic errors (a book published by BAR should have been more thoroughly checked by a native speaker of English, in order to make it more idiomatic!), but also important mistakes concerned with Sciences and Egypto logy, as we are going to show (see infra). Another principal minus of a book like this is the lack of any Index at the end. For a work like this it is unacceptable not to give any Index Nomi num et Rerum, as well as an Index of the ancient Egyptian medical terms in transliteration, & c. Yes, the author is indeed aware of her subject (at least superficially), but she definitely fails to intri gue the interest of the reader both due to her innumerable mistakes and perfunctory and de sultory way of compiling her book, as well as because of her desiccated and unpleasant style of writing. No matter how one loves something, if he/she fails to present it in the most perfect and irresistible way, the book will be a useless effort! If one compares, for instance, the excel lent book on ancient Egyptian Medicine by Dr. John F. Nunn1 (a book perfect in every aspect and a serious and very basic introduction to the subject, probably the best until now!), he/she will understand exactly what I mean.