African Civilisations — Egypt, Nubia, Kush

The introduction presents Africa as «the continent of the first civilised people»: it recalls that the first stone tools were used 3.3 million years ago in present-day Kenya, that the oldest known Homo sapiens remains were found in Morocco and are about 300,000 years old, and that farming began in north-east Africa in 10,000–8,000 BC. There is a vivid comparison of the continent's size — the road from Cape Town to Tangier is over 12,000 kilometres. The most striking detail is the British expedition of 1897 that destroyed the Oba's palace in Benin and looted more than 900 bronze sculptures; the book calls it «ironic and symptomatic» that West African civilisation first became known to the world through this looting.

Chapter one is the most serious part of the book. It explains that traditional African religion has no founder and no scripture, that its history is inseparable from the history of the peoples themselves, and that the main difficulty for research is precisely the lack of written sources; because shrines, masks and sacred stools rarely survive more than a few generations in the tropical climate, very few religious objects older than a century and a half remain. The geography of the religion, its interaction with Islam and Christianity, and the way local beliefs live on inside both are described in clear, respectful language.

At the chapter's core is the belief system: the one, creator, invisible God recognised by all African societies (the book stresses that no African people is known to have depicted God); divinities — personifications of natural forces and God's messengers; spirits and especially the «living dead» — recently deceased ancestors who are still remembered. The book makes an important correction: calling the libations, prayers and offerings made to contact ancestors «ancestor worship» is wrong, because African peoples clearly distinguish between what they do for God and what they do for their ancestors.

Then comes the life cycle: rites of birth, initiation, marriage and burial. Marriage as a religious and family duty, childlessness seen as a failing towards the community, and customs such as polygamy and marriage on behalf of a deceased person are described without judgement. The chapter's finest line is the famous African saying summing up kinship: «I am because we are, and since we are, therefore I am.» The section on the afterlife is also interesting: traditional religion has no heaven or hell; the dead remain «living dead» as long as they are remembered, and pass into a nameless collective immortality once forgotten.

The chapter's weakness is its age. The text clearly relies on an encyclopedic article written decades ago: in describing the religion's geography it still refers to «Upper Volta», a country called Burkina Faso since 1984, and figures such as conversion rates to Christianity are given with no date or source. The book has no footnotes, only a bibliography at the end. Similar carelessness appears in chapter four — for example, Coptic is confused with «Old Nubian».

In the end the book's value is unevenly spread: the traditional religions chapter and the Kerma–Kush chapter (giant tumulus tombs where over a hundred people were sacrificed, the Kushite king Piankhy who conquered Egypt, the peace between Meroë and Rome) are worth reading, while the large Egypt chapter in the middle is mostly a list of dynasties and pharaohs. Like the series' other volumes, this book is for beginners; readers who want to go deeper should move on to more detailed sources.

• Four chapters, systematically divided with subheadings
• Colour maps and illustrations, short marginal notes
• Author's and translator's bibliographies at the end