Giftings of the season
It’s been a grim year and there’s nothing better to put a smile on your face than giving and receiving well priced and proper nice presents…
Ancient Infographics
A beautiful and well researched book, the perfect present for anyone interested in ancient history.
I saw a mummy underneath the Christmas tree
A deliciously kitsch christmas decoration in the figure of a mummy from Keeping Choosing.
Re-reading history
A reprint of Amelia Edward’s A Thousand Miles up the Nile with important new context and commentary locating the book and Edward’s work within Egyptology.
Chichi classicism
Subtle t-shirts from Alex Eagle to help you mark out your sub-cultural territory. Choose from ‘Classicism’, ‘Brutalism’ and ‘Modernism’.
Crazy Paving
Mosaics of Alexandria: Pavements of Greek and Roman Egypt by Anne-Marie Guimier Sorbet is a beautifully illustrated art book backed with rigorous scholarship.
The mothership
An accurate-ish copy of the Great Pyramid of Piza, built from 1,476 lego bricks, complete with sphinges and obelisk. A luxurious executive toy.
A dog really is for Christmas
Dogs in the Athenian Agora by Colin M. Whiting is a fantastic little book looking at archaeological evidence for our four legged friends in the Athenian agora
Looking stylish
The trick to looking stylish is to accessorize the essentials with lovely little things, like this Osiris pin badge from Berlin’s Neues Museum.
Wonderful things
If you weren’t able to visit the exhibition, Egyptomania in Sainsbury Centre* is a richly detailed book full of beautiful Egyptian inspired artworks.
Playing with gods
Build up the ancient civilization of the pharaohs in Catan: Ancient Egypt. If Pharaonic Egypt is too recent you can also try Catan: Dawn of Humankind set in an even more ancient Africa.
The rich heartland of Holland Park
Charles and Maggie Jencks’ Holland Park Home, The Cosmic House, is a truly beautiful addition to London’s museum-scape.
Other recent books we recommend:
- City of the Beast: The London of Aleister Crowley by Phil Baker
- The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow
- John Outram (Twentieth Century Architects) by Geraint Franklin
- Looking for Theophrastus: Travels in search of a lost philosopher by Laura Beatty
- Mummified: The stories behind Egyptian mummies in museums by Angela Stienne
- Not far from Brideshead: Oxford between the wars by Daisy Dunn
- Thermae Romae by Mari Yamazaki
- Treasured: How Tutankhamun shaped a century by Christina Riggs
- The Werewolf in the Ancient World by Daniel Ogden
- The Wolf Den and TheHouse with the Golden Door by Elodie Harper
All images in this article used as Fair use. We will remove if requested by the rights holders.
Rhakotis 
One reply on “Festive gifts 2022”
Re “The Dawn of Everything”
Unfortunately, that book lacks credibility and depth.
In fact “The Dawn of Everything” is a biased disingenuous account of human history (www.persuasion.community/p/a-flawed-history-of-humanity ) that spreads fake hope (the authors of “The Dawn” claim human history has not “progressed” in stages, or linearly, and must not end in inequality and hierarchy as with our current system… so there’s hope for us now that it could get different/better again). As a result of this fake hope porn it has been widely praised. It conveniently serves the profoundly sick industrialized world of fakes and criminals. The book’s dishonest fake grandiose title shows already that this work is a FOR-PROFIT, instead a FOR-TRUTH, endeavour geared at the (ignorant gullible) masses.
Fact is human history since the dawn of agriculture has “progressed” in a linear stage (the “stuck” problem, see below), although not before that (www.focaalblog.com/2021/12/22/chris-knight-wrong-about-almost-everything ). This “progress” has been fundamentally destructive and is driven and dominated by “The 2 Married Pink Elephants In The Historical Room” (www.rolf-hefti.com/covid-19-coronavirus.html ) which the fake hope-giving authors of “The Dawn” entirely ignore naturally (no one can write a legitimate human history without understanding and acknowledging the nature of humans). And these two married pink elephants are the reason why we’ve been “stuck” in a destructive hierarchy and unequal class system , and will be far into the foreseeable future (the “stuck” question — “the real question should be ‘how did we get stuck?’ How did we end up in one single mode?” or “how we came to be trapped in such tight conceptual shackles” — [cited from their book] is the major question in “The Dawn” its authors never really answer, predictably).
“All experts serve the state and the media and only in that way do they achieve their status. Every expert follows his master, for all former possibilities for independence have been gradually reduced to nil by present society’s mode of organization. The most useful expert, of course, is the one who can lie. With their different motives, those who need experts are falsifiers and fools. Whenever individuals lose the capacity to see things for themselves, the expert is there to offer an absolute reassurance.” —Guy Debord
A good example that one of the “expert” authors, Graeber, has no real idea on what world we’ve been living in and about the nature of humans is his last brief article on Covid where his ignorance shines bright already at the title of his article, “After the Pandemic, We Can’t Go Back to Sleep.” Apparently he doesn’t know that most people WANT to be asleep, and that they’ve been wanting that for thousands of years (and that’s not the only ignorant notion in the title) — see last cited source above. Yet he (and his partner) is the sort of person who thinks he can teach you something authentically truthful about human history and whom you should be trusting along those terms. Ridiculous!
“The Dawn” is just another fantasy, or ideology, cloaked in a hue of cherry-picked “science,” served lucratively to the gullible ignorant underclasses who crave myths and fairy tales.
“The evil, fake book of anthropology, “The Dawn of Everything,” … just so happened to be the most marketed anthropology book ever. Hmmmmm.” — Unknown
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