O’Connor D. Quirke S. Mysterious Lands

London, UCL Press, 2003. — 264 p.
Encounters with ancient Egypt.
This series of eight books derives from the proceedings of a conference entitled
‘Encounters with Ancient Egypt’, held at the Institute of Archaeology, University
College London (UCL) in December 2000. Since then, many new chapters have been
especially commissioned for publication, and those papers originally provided for the
conference and now selected for publication have been extensively revised and
rewritten.
There are many noteworthy features of the books. One is the overall attempt to
move the study of Ancient Egypt into the mainstream of recent advances in
archaeological and anthropological practice and interpretation. This is a natural
outcome of London University’s Institute of Archaeology, one of the largest
archaeology departments in the world, being the academic host. Drawing on the
Institute’s and other related resources within UCL, the volumes in the series reflect an
extraordinary degree of collaboration between the series editor, individual volume
editors, contributors and colleagues. The wide range of approaches to the study of the
past, pursued in such a vibrant scholarly environment as UCL’s, has encouraged the
scholars writing in these volumes to consider their disciplinary interests from new
perspectives. All the chapters presented here have benefited from wide-ranging
discussion between experts from diverse academic disciplines, including art history,
papyrology, anthropology, archaeology and Egyptology, and subsequent revision.