This novel work uses case studies of both familiar and unfamiliar materials, expanding consideration of ancient Egyptian elite culture to encompass lived experience and exploitation of the natural environment. The opening chapter sets out the conceptual ground for the analyses that follow, arguing that the relatively ephemeral activities under investigation were centrally important to the actors. The first and largest study treats human organization of the landscape and its use to create and transmit elite meanings, especially through pictorial and encyclopaedic forms, and to mobilize emotional values. Next, a treatment of the planning of primarily third millennium settlements on the floodplain argues that Egypt offers a partly rural perspective that provides an alternative to the urban focus of many early civilizations but has parallels in elite culture in much of the world. The third study discusses how a single year's events were orchestrated to culminate in a celebratory hunt in which the king, his court, and high officials participated. The concluding chapter presents an initial synthesis of Egyptian treatments of elite experience, drawing in particular upon additional evidence from literary texts and attitudes to travel.
John Baines is Professor of Egyptology at the University of Oxford. His principal publications are on Egyptian art, literature, and religion. He has also studied the role of writing in Egyptian society and high-cultural legitimations and concerns of elites. His publications include Visual and Written Culture in Ancient Egypt (2007) and The Disappearance of Writing Systems (co-edited with John Bennet and Stephen Houston, Equinox, 2008).
"One of the best aspects of this book [is] a stubborn focus not just on the evidence for elite experience in ancient Egypt, but on the human beings who lived this experience. If the point of archaeology is to move beyond the archaeological evidence toward an understanding of the people who produced this evidence, then this book is an admirable success." - Ancient Near Eastern Studies "In the Introduction this carefully produced book sets out the methodological approach and the obvious challenges in a context where those expressing experience were limited by rules set up to define what was appropriate for being displayed (decorum). But as this book deals with sociology rather than the consumption of aesthetics, its author also convincingly shows that the leisured classes were striving for enjoyment, celebration and appreciation of the finer things of life." - Egyptian Archaeology

John Baines