Table of Contents

I. Prologue
1: Visual, written, decorum
II. Written culture
2: Literacy and ancient Egyptian society
3: Four notes on literacy
4: Literacy, social organization and the archaeological record: the case of early Egypt
5: Writing and society in early Egypt
6: Orality and literacy
7: Ancient Egyptian concepts and uses of the past: third to second millennium evidence
III. Visual culture
8: Theories and universals of representation: Heinrich Schafer and Egyptian art
9: Schafer's mottoes and the understanding of representation
10: Colour terminology and colour classification: ancient Egyptian colour terminology and polychromy
11: Stone and other materials: usages and values
12: Communication and display: the integration of early Egyptian art and writing
13: On the status and purposes of ancient Egyptian art

About the Author

John Baines is Professor of Egyptology at the University of Oxford.

Reviews

Here is a rarity: a collection of essays selected annotated and updated not by an editor, but by their writer, with all the resultant advantages... John Baines does more than compile a series of related papers into a convenient single book.
*Jasmine Day, Journal of Archaeology Science*

This well illustrated volume brings together some of John Baines's valuable studies...making better available key contributions on core problems of written and visual culture in ancient Egypt. The book is organized as a synthesis of excellent treated individual topics that offers numerous points of departure for further research.
*Ilona Regulski, Bibliotheca Orientalis*

a work that deserves to be seriously read and re-viewed.
*Robyn A. Gillam, Chronique d'Égypte*