An explorative grab-bag of a book, in which Hawkes - who was an archaeologist - traces the course of man's relationship with the sun from the ancient Egyptians to the Mesoamerican civilisations to Greece and Rome and finally to the understanding of the sun as a scientific object rather than a spiritual one. It sort of sits on the borderline of religion and mythology, though that's a modern assessment of its own (no doubt Akhenaten and the Aztecs and so on didn't think of their own religious beliefs as mythological, any more than Christians think so of their religion today).

There's a great deal of opinion in here, as well as more objective history, but this is I think primarily an imaginative book - as one would expect when dealing with a symbol such as the sun. It's interesting to read about how different cultures saw it, however - although it has to be said that Hawkes' sympathy is clearly and entirely with Akhenaten.