posted on 27 May 2024

Totally Chaotic History: Ancient Egypt Gets Unruly by Greg Jenner (with the help of Dr Campbell Price)

Greg Jenner is a public historian, broadcaster and author who is dedicated to the idea of popularising the study of history with the help of humour. He acted as a consultant to the T.V. series of Horrible Histories – so you’ll not be surprised that his latest book, Totally Chaotic History: Ancient Egypt Gets Unruly is irreverent, fast moving and the reading equivalent of a sugar rush. 

Fortunately for older readers like me, Dr Campbell Price is on hand to make us take a breath, consider the evidence and encourage us to think about what we’re being told in a slightly more relaxed fashion. Price is well placed to play that role because he’s the Curator of Egypt and Sudan at Manchester Museum, which houses one of the UK’s largest collections of Egyptian antiquities.

If you pick up this book, you’re going to encounter all the things you might associate with the Ancient Egyptians – pyramids, mummies, papyrus scrolls, Pharaohs, Gods – but set in their right context and timeframe. It’s easy to forget just what a span of time we are talking about when we casually talk of Ancient Egypt: it’s a term that runs from about 4,300BCE right through until it becomes part of the Roman Empire in 395CE.

This huge block of time is labelled into specific periods by Egyptian scholars and given – as Jenner says – less than exciting names like the Predynastic Period or the First, Second and Third Intermediate Periods. You’ll be glad to hear that there’s a really useful visual timeline for you to follow that will give you an immediate overview of the history as it slips from one period to the next.

I suspect that, like me, you’re going to love the stuff about the Gods and about the processes of making mummies that evolved over time. Jenner keeps throwing facts at us and they are astonishing, funny and informative but I also loved Dr Price’s ‘Accuracy Alerts’ that are like having your very own fact-checker next to you as you gallop along.

Jenner is keen to get his message across that we tend to like our history to be structured and orderly while in real life it’s all much more messy and chaotic. None of us know how future viewers of our own times will see us but what we can know for sure is that we’ve no idea what’s just around the corner while we’re living it.

There’s an added bonus to the book in the form of illustrations done by Rikin Parekh, a graduate of the Camberwell College of Arts and the University of Westminster. The graphic design of the pages makes the whole experience inter-active.

Available now from Walker Books, you will be able to get a copy from your local independent bookshop – who will be able to order a copy for you if they don’t have it on their shelves.

Terry Potter

May 2024