Book Review: Klemm, R. and Klemm, D. D., Stones and Quarries in Ancient Egypt, British Museum Press 2008
Abstract. Rosemarie and Dietrich Klemm’s Stones and Quarries in Ancient Egypt, is described by W.D. Davies in the preface to the British Museum Edition as “one of modern Egyptology’s most valuable works of reference”. Stones and Quarries is an outstanding work of reference, but it wants to be much more. It contains a comprehensive gazetteer of quarries, whose primary use would be in the field. Its instructional content is designed, according to the authors, to raise standards of geological literacy among “all Egyptologists,” and to encourage interdisciplinary research. Looking at Stones and Quarries as, at the same time, a reference book, a field manual and a textbook of Egyptian petrology provokes two sets of questions. The one concerns the role of geology in Egyptology. Who should learn geology, for what purpose, and to what levels of expertise? The other concerns the future of conventional reference books in an age of electronic media. [more…]
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