Word: egyptians
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...still made a great effort to hammer out a respectable book. A God Against the Gods is the product of years of meticulous research, as the impressive bibliography at the end of the volume attests. From an intellectual standpoint, the book offers fascinating insight into the details of ancient Egyptian customs and the intricacies of dynastic politics, which the author has adapted deftly to his main theme. And Drury has clearly not lost his old gift for sustained narrative that salvaged some of his previous works. An accomplished literary craftsman if nothing else, he has skillfully worked this great mass...
...suspects that this preoccupation with Egyptian arcana has affected Drury's other literary skills. Drury was never famous for creating endearingly human characterizations; yet the figures in his latest book actually impress the reader as having been embalmed for a thousand years. They are not unbelievable--it is merely difficult to understand why Drury would ever have bothered to resurrect this hedonistic, simple-minded Pharaoh and his sycophantic friends. The dialogue, moreover, could only have been overheard coming from inside a dusty sarcophagus. Like the stiff-jointed and forbidding statuary that is ancient Egypt's gift to the world...
...Already the momentum is starting to build. While it took him 15 years of Advise and Consent novels just to kill off three Presidents, two Senators and a Secretary of State--and, of course, all those Chinese who died in the nuclear war--Drury now has 3000 years of Egyptian history to play around with. The possibilities are, unfortunately, almost endless. One can only hope that Drury will learn a different song-and-dance soon, before we all wind up losers...
...Egyptian Mission to the United Nations...
...Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, the host, grandly declared it a "full success." Well, not exactly. But by the standards of Third World conferences the first summit meeting of Arab and black African leaders was something of a hit -and a notable triumph for Sadat. There was a lot of predictable rhetoric attacking Zionism, apartheid, colonialism and imperialism. There was also an unexpectedly large concession to the Africans from the Arab oil states: a pledge of $1.45 billion in development...