This book is the culminating volume of the magisterial trilogy giving an account of the history of Egyptology. It is twice the size of its two predecessors (Thompson Reference Thompson2015a, Reference Thompson2015b) because the story is so full during the period it covers. Thompson is a consummate historian, as his many other publications show, and he presents a broad yet scholarly detailed conspectus of the subject’s burgeoning modern international development during its most traumatic years in Europe and America. The French dominated Egyptology in Egypt with a succession of directors of Antiquities despite the British virtual governance of the country since the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 and the 1882 campaign defeating Colonel Arabi Pasha’s revolt. The contrasting approaches by the French directors Maspero and Lacau had a considerable effect on Egyptological work and scholarship, and rising nationalism in Egypt also began to cast its shadow. German scholarship led in literature studies, the British in excavations, with the Americans coming later into the field, notably with the ‘giant’ George Reisner in Egypt; he also dominating Nubian and Sudanese studies in the early twentieth century.

The twenty chapters are essentially chronological, but there is also some particular thematic focus; and all are closely referenced, supported by an excellent and full bibliography. The coverage of Egyptology and its struggles to survive during the two world wars, particularly the catastrophic losses in the Great War, is an extremely valuable account. Two chapters focus on Nubia and the 1960s to 1970s’ international response to the rescue of the Nubian temples and the archaeology of an area soon to be forever drowned beneath the waters of the great Lake Nasser; Nubia has so often been overshadowed by the focus on the northern sites and finds. Also, appropriately, two chapters are devoted to Carter and Tutankhamun, giving a well-balanced and equable account of disagreements and the French director’s interfering involvement in the discovery. Thompson opines that, most apposite, it was Carter himself who was more the victim of the so-called ‘Pharaoh’s Curse’.

Particularly notable chapters are Chapter 9 on ‘The Library’, Chapter 22 on ‘Nazi Egyptology and the Second World War’ (which also includes the international controversy over the Nefertiti bust in Berlin) and the insightful Chapter 19, ‘Women in Egyptology’. Sir Alan Gardiner, a major figure internationally acknowledged for his work on the ancient language and hieroglyphs, is prominent through the years covered and was generous in both academic and financial support for British Egyptology.

The detailed index covers all three volumes and is the essential key that opens up this major contribution, from the wild European speculation in the early days and the often weird attempts to interpret the hieroglyphics, through the Age of Enlightenment and into the full flowering of Egyptology as a major study that can find its reflection in many other disciplines.

Thompson rightly notes that whilst Egyptology is essentially fieldwork, it is the accurate publication and evaluation that progresses studies in the subject, and his coverage, particularly of European and American scholarship, with his wide knowledge and command of the literature, is invaluable. Modern Egyptologists especially should read this book and be aware of the ‘shoulders of giants’ upon which they stand.

Without question this trilogy is a major contribution to the study of Egyptology, and will long remain so, but this last volume may rightly be described as ‘a triumph’. It will be read with advantage by practising Egyptologists and aficionados with equal interest and enjoyment, contributing immensely to their knowledge.