Epilepsy in Babylonia

evidence is factual and descriptive and thorough, but her conclusions are sometimes circumspect. Compelling questions that are raised in conclusions are not pursued. How did Egyptians explain physical deformity, and why did they have deformed gods? Her comparison of attitudes towards dwarfism with attitudes to other forms of physical disability loses potency by the briefness of the discussion. The paucity of literary evidence that has compelled Dasen to concentrate on iconographic material is one reason for this. But the unstated and unrepresented are as noteworthy as the depicted. That Egyptians only represented members of the working class and not the upper class with physical disabilities is arresting. The Athenian artists who replaced ethnic characteristics of pygmies with physical abnormalities as symbols of otherness were also making a comment. So too the stereotyping of dwarfs as childish, as actors, as caricatures, and as marginalized identities. In other words, those attitudes that were unrepresented, misrepresented and altered in iconography also need interpretation. These observations aside, Dasen has tackled a large subject, and has done an admirable job at ordering an immense amount of evidence. With the currently expanding interest in medicine, health, body and disability in the ancient world (at least two books on disability and two studies of dwarfism in the Roman world are in the pipelines), Dasen's book is a timely and valuable contribution.