Daniel Meyerson

Good lord. I was looking for a book about how the Rosetta Stone was deciphered. What I got was a lot of high-flown philosophy about how Napoleon thought he was a mythic hero like Alexander (who thought he was a god), how most of his decisions were based on that, and therefore how/why he had dug up a huge stone and took copies of the carvings on its surface. And a weird, obsessed boy who learned all the languages and therefore somehow figured out what the carvings meant - there are brief discussions of what and how he figured out, but the focus of the book is on who (the author imagines) Champollion (the boy) and Napoleon were, and thought they were. Also, the timeline is utterly tangled - Napoleon went to Egypt when Champollion was just a boy, then it talks about his discovery of the meaning of the stone, then a great many details about Napoleon's campaign in Egypt, then what happened after Napoleon was sent into exile, then how Champollion got to see the carvings - back and forth until I have no idea what happened when. This was an utter failure at explaining the how of the Stone's decipherment, and I don't trust the author's declarations about the whys of it; they seem to be pulled largely out of thin air (fact: he did this. A chapter of wild notions about why - because mythic and heroic and stuff. Another fact, or a minor story about a side character, or something - then another long digression into mythic notions. Sheesh!).… (més)

I usually find it quite difficult to get into most non-fiction (spent too many years reading only the fruits of academia), but the author's narrative style in this book was very approachable. In fact, he borders on gossip and speculation at times, but this lack of gravitas offsets the factual basis of Carter's discovery of King Tut's tomb to just the right extent. We feel like we can really get to know Carter's cantankerous and determined personality, which is reall he thread that weaves together the whole narrative. Without Carter (and his adventures) we might be left with nothing more than character sketches of the various people who passed through the Valley of the Kings - ancient or otherwise.… (més)