A Not Quite History: The Great Courses’ “The History of Ancient Egypt”

For the past week, I’ve been listening to a series of lectures from The Great Courses on the history of ancient Egypt, which I must have grabbed on an Audible sale many moons ago. The series is presented by Dr. Bob Brier, a notable Egyptologist and mummy expert. I say notable because much of his popularity stems from his extensive popular work with mummies, including reconstructing tombs for museum exhibits, reproducing the Egyptian mummification process, and other mummy-friendly things; he also has some 30 years of experience “in the field.” Given that the presenter of these lectures is most notable for his popular work, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that the lectures themselves are packaged accordingly. Yet, in listening to these lectures, I found myself wondering about those credentials. An ardent fan of ancient Egypt and apparent mummy expert Brier certainly is, but do these lectures represent someone who could be called an expert of ancient Egypt’s history?

The answer is “not really,” and I don’t know if that’s due to The Great Courses’ educational philosophy (this is my first TGC experience) or Brier’s insistence on a casual, heavily anecdotal, and meandering series of lectures. Whatever the reason behind it, I have to say that I have been greatly disappointed in this series. I assumed going in that I would get a comprehensive history of ancient Egypt with at least a degree of scholarly depth, but overall, the lectures are devoid of what I’d call “useful material.” Indeed, I don’t know that I’ve learned anything I couldn’t have easily picked up by reading the wiki page (Brier’s personal anecdotes aside), which to me seems to decrease the value of these lectures as a “history of Ancient Egypt.” Mind you, Brier is noticeably enthusiastic about his subject; indeed, it’s clear from his voice and anecdotes that he absolutely loves ancient Egypt. Yet, that enthusiasm, for me, doesn’t translate to a history of an entire culture.

As a so-called history, much of the lecture series begins by outright discarding the things you’d expect from a history: dates are discarded from the start and generally ignored throughout (except when modern Egyptology is thrown in); almost all of the historical discussion relies on who built what and what made that building different from another; and little is really told to us about the relationship between the ancient Egyptians, the world around them (setting aside loose discussions about religion and culture, who married who, etc.), and their neighbors (except to tell us who they liked to fight). The more I listened to these lectures, the more frustrated I became. To me, it felt like I were listening to something recorded for middle school, not a general adult audience. Brier repeatedly wanders into tangents — especially ones set in modern times — and avoids telling us anything of substance about almost anything. He even has entire lectures about modern Egyptology discoveries, which, in my view, are not a “history of ancient Egypt” at all. If you want to know how the pyramids and obelisks were built or what Egyptologists discovered, then you’ll find plenty of general information here, but if you come in expecting a comprehensive history of ancient Egypt, you’ll probably end up where I am: frustrated.

Yet, Brier’s greatest offense throughout the series is his endless reliance on speculation and guesswork. Over and over, Brier offers his hypotheses for all manner of things, at times even asserting, tongue-in-cheek, that his hypotheses are right, but little real evidence is given to substantiate any of these or the hypotheses of others that he puts on offer; certainly, Brier doesn’t give us the kind of detail we’d need to find most of these hypotheses convincing, this despite Brier having written an entire book arguing that a pharaoh was, in fact, murdered.

All of these “issues” led me to begin to question myself. Perhaps we just don’t know a whole lot of anything about the ancient Egyptians. Maybe Brier’s lectures are basically *it.* This led me to reach out to a colleague who, while not an Egyptologist proper, has made a career studying ancient cultures. The more we talked, the more I realized that my high standards are not the problem: these are just not properly packaged lectures. If anything, this entire series should be repackaged as “An Egyptologist’s Guide to Pharaohs, the Things They Built, and the Discoveries We Made.” As a history, it falls abysmally flat. As a popular, mostly chronological wandering through the major figures, construction projects, and discoveries, it, I suppose, fits the bill. But that’s just not what I expect from 48 lectures on an ancient culture about which we certainly know considerably more than presented.

So, if what you want is “An Egyptologist’s Guide to Pharaohs, the Things They Built, and the Discoveries We Made,” then pick up this lecture series. If you want a more in-depth history of ancient Egypt, I’m afraid you’ll need to skip this series and read a 500+ book instead.