The Great Tours: A Guided Tour of Ancient Egypt

I have purchased many courses and enjoyed them all except this course. It was extremely disappointing! The professor seemed to be heading a script and showed no interest or enthusiasm for the topic. The visuals were horrible;drawings with no meaning. I have been to Egypt, and watched many videos. This was the worst. Great Courses should remove it from your offerings. If it had been the first I’d ordered, I’d never order another.

Lots of information. But really nothing more than an “information dump”. Being a good teacher or lecturer is being able to convey information in a useful or coherent manner. Perhaps similar to telling a good story. Here the detail is overwhelming. There is no doubt that the presenter know the information. She simply fails to present in anything other than an “information dump”. Look elsewhere.

It is difficult to imagine that a review of the Great Pyramid, the Sphinx and everything Egypt could be this boring. Dr. Hartwig spews information (data) in what we think is a cold listing of features. There are few photos and no videos which is what we expected. We visited Egypt and our guide did a much better work while we were there. We stopped watching after the first DVD.

By the title of this course, I assumed it would be a live guided tour of Egypt. It was not. Melinda Hartwig seems quite knowledgeable, but the lecture with still photos and diagrams was frankly uninteresting. The first DVD was defective and would not play. I got through the second DVD but it was so tiresome, I doubt I will view the rest. I have studied Egyptian history and hieroglyphs for 20 plus years and even to a novice I think this would be quite dry and uninteresting.

I was very excited to start the ancient Egypt lectures! I have finished my second DVD and am very unhappy. I wrote to your customer service email about it on Fri. Here it is, Tues afternoon and no reply yet... don't know what happened to your supposed quick turnaround on responses!

Too much lecture without imagery: site maps, building plans, drawings or photos, should be included with all the commentary. Entire sites and discoveries were mentioned without even so little as a map to locate the item. Too bad! This could be a gem.

I purchased this course on a bargain offer. Glad I did--get it on bargain. If you are looking for a real tour of the great monuments and places of ancient Egypt you may be a bit disappointed. I was. A more appropriate title might have been, "Guided Tour of almost all Ancient Egyptian Temples (in detail)" Melisa Hartwig certainly knows the artistic registers in every temple and she she makes sure the viewer (this course would be almost useless on audio.) knows them too. Now I am aware that many of the ancient sites we still have available are temples and that there is stunning artwork and statuary,, but I was looking for a course about places, tombs and monuments, not a graduate course for archaeology and ancient Egyptian history students. One other set of carps I have here is the lack of video. I know that many of the sites do not allow camera and certainly not flash photography, but we live in a video world and thre should have been a lot more video. Further, many of the wealth of photos were sub standard for today's 4K and above televisions. However, for those interested in anything ancient Egyptian, you probably will get a lot out of this course--especially if you can get it at a bargain.

Ancient Egypt has an incredible past and many artifacts for today's enjoyment. This course started out great, taking us to the pyramids and examining the structures, what artifacts still remain, and studying the wall carvings and inscriptions. Yet, each lesson spent more time on the wall carvings/inscriptions than on the structures and location. Halfway through the course the wall art became extremely redundant. Each pharoah's artisan's repeating what dozens of predecessors recorded before them. They all paid homage to Amun Re, all showed Isis, Osiris, Seth, and Nephythys. They all showed wars, paying tribute to the gods, etc. Fine. They all did that during their rule, and one would expect the repitition throughout the pyramids and tombs. The issue I have is that to a lesser or greater extent, looking at the same inscriptions in just another location during each lesson is boring. Why not share more photos or video of the actual locations, touring the rubble strewn places, rather than repeating the same legends and wall paintings. Okay, we get it, that was the religion and belief, but don't beat us to death with it. How many times does Hartwig say "enter the great room and look to your left and you'll see the...." Yet, she doesn't show us what she is claiming is there. There are no photographs (or better yet) video. She just claims it's there and then moves on. She states she's worked and visited the sites in Egypt of 30 years or so, and one would expect that she would have thousands of photographs, but she only focuses on the wall art. Some of it is in incredible condition, but others are so worn and effaced as to be barely recognizable against the damage. Why bother showing the stuff that even she admits can only be intrepreted by making line drawings of it. Why not show a few photographs of the tombs and pyramids at sunrise and sunset. Some of the photographs shows light standards around the base of the pyramids. Wouldn't those light up the faces of the massive monuments at night? Wouldn't that be a wonderful sight to see on our "tour?" This course needed only to be half as long and just mentioned that what artwork we'd already seen in other tombs was nearly identical in others. Otherwise, fill each lesson with what was different in each site and not what was the same as all the others.

The way the lecturers dance around BCE vs BC is very distracting. Instead of teaching history they are rewriting it.

This is a very good review of Egypt's ancient archeology - its buildings, funerary monuments and living quarters. It is very well presented with no lack of photography. Presenter provides relevant historical background and a detailed explanation of Egyptian beliefs. Egyptian history/archeology is pretty dry subject matter, however, this course does much to make it interesting.