Book Notices

The author's theory is that an expedition from Egypt in the reign of Rameses III (around 1187 B.C.) sailed westwards, hoping to follow the sun into the underworld so as to be reunited with it at its rising. The newcomers introduced many features of their own civilization to the peoples of the Gulf Coast of Mexico, bringing about the sudden florescence of Olmec culture. Shortly afterwards, refugees from Shang China crossed the Pacific to add their quota of new traits. A southward movement of Egyptians, or of Egyptianized natives, was responsible for creating the civilizations of Chavin in Peru and Tiahuanaco in Bolivia. Heyerdahl's voyages have shown that such contacts were theoretically possible, but no object of Egyptian manufacture has ever been found in controlled excavations in the Americas. Jairazbhoy's case therefore rests on the interpretation of legends and histories written down some 2,500 years later than the time of Rameses, and on stylistic similarities between Egyptian and Olmec art and iconography. His technique is the familiar one of accepting whatever fits the argument and rejecting what does not. When good similarities exist, they are seized upon; when the resemblances are slight, this merely indicates that pristine Egyptian culture was quickly diluted by local elements. Using such arguments it is possible to make out a case for almost anything! In such a situation, conclusive ' proof' of Egyptian contact is impossible to establish and, for the same reasons, is impossible to ' disprove '. One is left to consider the balance of probabilities: whether the similarities are vague, unspecific, and explicable by chance alone, or whether they are so exact and so detailed that diffusion is the only possible explanation. Since standards of proof vary from one person to another, this book will strengthen the convictions of those who already believe, but will do nothing to convince the sceptic. I personally found nothing in the book which cannot be explained in other ways. To me, this slim volume seems a virtuoso work of fantasy masquerading as serious scholarship, with footnotes, bibliographies and all the paraphernalia of objective research. As such, it is not just a bad book but a dangerous one which can seriously mislead the innocent non-specialist.