Acknowledgements to Previous Editions

Smith, W. Stevenson; Simpson, William Kelly

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Acknowledgements to Previous Editions

W. Stevenson Smith, William Kelly Simpson

The Art and Architecture of Ancient Egypt

~The author would like to express his grateful thanks to colleagues and heads of institutions for their generous response to his requests for information and photographs and permission to reproduce illustrations. Their courtesy has been acknowledged in the list of illustrations, as well as in the notes in a few special cases. The friendly co-operation of the...

Author

W. Stevenson Smith, William Kelly Simpson

PublisherYale University Press

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31542

Acknowledgements to Previous Editions

The author would like to express his grateful thanks to colleagues and heads of institutions for their generous response to his requests for information and photographs and permission to reproduce illustrations. Their courtesy has been acknowledged in the list of illustrations, as well as in the notes in a few special cases. The friendly co-operation of the officials of the Cairo Museum and the Egyptian Department of Antiquities has been of inestimable assistance over a period of many years. A Fulbright award, which made it possible to spend most of the year 1951 in Egypt, provided an invaluable opportunity to re-examine familiar things and to see much that was new and important. The author owes a particular debt to his own institution, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for the privilege of drawing upon the records of the expeditions which they long maintained in the field. However, so much help and encouragement has been freely offered from all sides that it would be virtually impossible to list each individual source. Many of the ideas expressed here have evolved in the process of lecturing on Egyptian art in the Fine Arts Department of Harvard University since 1948. Special thanks are due to Miss Suzanne Chapman, Miss Mary B. Cairns, and Mr Nicholas Millet for their assistance in preparing the illustrations and text for the press and to the publishers for their willingness to have text figures especially drawn by Mr John Walkey.

W.S.S.

To revise the work of a great scholar after his death is a hazardous undertaking, particularly when he was one’s friend and mentor over a considerable number of years. The major changes in this edition consist of additions and revisions to the notes, additions to the illustrations, and the alteration of the text to take these additions into account. In only one major area have I ventured to alter Smith’s basic exposition, and this is in his treatment of the Kerma burials and assemblage. Smith followed Reisner’s interpretation of the great tumuli as burials of Egyptian governors of a Sudanese trading outpost. The consensus today is that the Kerma culture represents an indigenous Sudanese kingship contemporary with the Hyksos and Dynasty XVII. The Egyptian statues and other objects of the Middle Kingdom were therefore obtained by trade or as booty from raids to the north, and Kerma’s floruit is dated in the Second Intermediate Period, not the Middle Kingdom.

In preparing this edition I wish to acknowledge the considerable assistance of Mr Whitney M. Davis. He has contributed sections and references on rock art, the theoretical considerations of Egyptian art, Aegean relations, and many other subjects, and has been responsible for many revisions and additions to the notes and illustrations. Acknowledgement of permission for illustrations has been made in the list of illustrations, but I should like to thank in particular the curatorial staff of the Brooklyn Museum, the Robert Lowie Museum at Berkeley, and my colleagues at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Mme Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt of the Louvre and Dr Dietrich Wildung of the Staatliche Sammlung Ägyptischer Kunst in Munich have graciously permitted us to illustrate new acquistions in the collections in their charge. M. J. Lauffray of the Franco-Egyptian Center at Karnak has also kindly provided photographs which have as yet not been published.

W.K.S.

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