David Gordon is a polymath and a walking bibliography. So when I mentioned to him I was reading old books on Egyptian history (George Rawlinson’s Ancient Egypt and E.A. Wallis Budge’s The Book of the Dead) and the history of philosophy (John Burnet’s Early Greek Philosophy), of course he had suggestions for further reading. And lo and behold all of his suggestions are online and free in ePub format!
- A History of Egypt by Flinders Petrie
- Plato and Aristotle by Alfred Edward Taylor
- The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia by A.H. Saynce
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Here some more Danny.
The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1: Chaldaea by George Rawlinson
The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2: Assyria by Rawlinson
The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3: Media by Rawlinson
The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4: Babylon by Rawlinson
The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5: Persia by Rawlinson
The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6: Parthia by Rawlinson (CLASSIC!)
The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7: The Sassanian by Rawlinson
Here is the link for you or anyone else intrested: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search.html/?format=html&default_prefix=all&sort_order=downloads&query=rawlinson
Pseudo-Aristotle, On Marvelous Things Heard or De mirabilibus auscultationibus by Aristotle but debatable. http://www.archive.org/stream/demirabilibusaus00arisrich/demirabilibusaus00arisrich_djvu.txt
Yup… I have a hobby, celestial mechanics, in which the fundamental research was all done between Newton and Einstein, so online books are fantastic for me. You can read Newton in Latin, if you like.
If you must have older books on Ancient Egypt I wouldn’t dare going with anything other than Gardiner’s Egypt of the Pharaohs. There’s simply been too much work done in the last five decades. Older works are obsolete and in many places flatly incorrect. Especially anything by Budge.
When you read almost any history book by anyone who is not knowledgeable of Rothbard/Hoppe or other Austrian writers, it is frustrating to consider their arguments and speculations as to the motivations and effects of various monarchs and other governmental authorities. A particular king might be the most blatant thief, murderer and liar, but the typical historian never actually uses those words. For example I have seen Henry VIII of England described euphemistically as “an acquisitive magpie” rather than the abominable brigand that he really was, and his stealing and butchery are excused because it “helped lead the way to the modern English state”, as if this is some kind of recommendation. The diarist and Naval bureaucrat Samuel Pepys is not described as building a corrupt war machine for the purpose of enriching a tiny clique of politicians and merchants, but instead he is “building the oaken walls which would protect Englishmen’s liberties” or similar baloney.
But the good news is, once you’ve absorbed Austrianism you can easily connect the dots for yourself. It literally makes me LOL when I read another of those euphemisms or lame excuses for murder and robbery, and I want to call the author up on the phone to share the laugh. Too bad that not all readers of history can share this insight, but that’s where mises.org (and the international mises.*) come in. People come here for financial and economic information, and they leave with their “statist goggles” ripped from their faces, never to be replaced.
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