Historical and Archaeological Aspects of Egyptian Funerary Culture, a thoroughly reworked translation of Les textes des sarcophages et la democratie published in 2008, challenges the widespread idea that the "royal" Pyramid Texts of the Old Kingdom after a process of "democratisation" became, in the Middle Kingdom, accessible even to the average Egyptian in the form of the Coffin Texts. Rather they remained an element of elite funerary culture, and particularly so in the Upper Egyptian nomes. The author traces the emergence here of the so-called "nomarchs" and their survival in...

Although Herodotus' dictum that "Egypt is a gift of the Nile" is proverbial, there has been only scant attention to the way the river impact ancient Egyptian society. Egyptologists frequently focus on the textual and iconographic record, whereas archaeologists and earth scientists approach the issue from the perspective of the natural sciences. The essays in this volume bridge this gap by analyzing the river both as a natural and as a cultural phenomenon. Adopting an approach of cultural ecology, it addresses issues like ancient land use, administration and taxation, irrigation, and religious...