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).

• Preface List of Figures Conventions Chronological Table Map 1. Contexts and Representations of High Culture 2. Egypt as a Physical, Social and Represented Landscape 3. A Planned World? The Early City, Patterns and Meanings of Settlement 4. Celebration in the Landscape: A Hunting Party under Amenemhat II 5. Elite Experience

"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