The book looks at the emergence of the prefab as a unique housing form. It examines the reasons prefabs have survived way beyond their design life of fifteen years; when other post-war housing types have been demolished. There is no other single text that sets the temporary housing programme in context.
#3056768 in eBooks 2003-12-16 2003-12-16File Name: B000PMG4AS
Review
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Greekness and Egyptianness in funerary artBy DAJRoman Egypt is a fascinating example of how cultures interact; and theres something of a fad for it in academia these days. Funerary customs were the most quintessentially Egyptian of traditions; yet most funerary art in the Roman period was heavily influenced by Hellenistic art style. The resulting mixture of Egyptian and Greek styles and motifs tends to surprise modern viewers. We tend to think of this kind of art on a scale; with purely Greek on one end and purely Egyptian on the other; and attribute the variations in the middle to greater or lesser Hellenistic influence. Here; Riggs tries to analyze the reasons why people chose to represent themselves in a "more Greek" or "more Egyptian" way. By Roman times there was no clear dividing line between Greek and Egyptian ethnicity; so the use of different art styles was largely a matter of choice.Riggs focuses on mummies from three very different sample sites: Akhmim; the Kharga Oasis; and Thebes. When discussing funerary art more broadly; she also discusses some other sites like Meir. Although art style is her major focus; she devotes a chapter to gendermdash;how the portrayal of men and women differed. Unlike in earlier periods of Egyptian history; deceased women were often likened to the goddess Hathor instead of the male god Osiris. Riggs suggests that a greater interest in the individual identities of the dead led to this change.Other recent books cover much of the same ground; such as Portraits and Masks: Burial Customs in Roman Egypt; Visualizing the Afterlife in the Tombs of Graeco-Roman Egypt; and Late Antique Egyptian Funerary Sculpture; and they may be better at examining how different types of funerary art were used. This one can feel a little bogged down in detail; because it spends large parts of the middle chapters analyzing individual mummies and other artifacts. Still; this is a solid study of funerary art in Roman Egypt and the deeper questions it touches on.