The volume provides a detailed catalogue of 127 stelae (many funerary) deriving from the Nile Valley, now part of the Egyptian collection in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. The stelae are written in various scripts – Egyptian hieroglyphic, hieratic and demotic, Carian, Greek, Coptic and early Arabic – and cover a date-range of over 4000 years. Few museums have published their complete holdings of such material, and the carefully described and translated information from these stelae throws a flood of light on the history, religion, funerary customs, art and iconography, daily life and administrative systems of ancient Egypt and Nubia. Each entry has a photograph of the stela as well as a meticulous line-drawing which enables the texts and iconography to be understood and interpreted. Full museological details such as material, precise measurements, provenance (where known), mode of acquisition and dating are provided. The volume will interest specialists as well as a wider public concerned with Egyptology.

This volume features all the graffiti from the Baboon and Falcon galleries at the Sacred Animal Necropolis, North Saqqara, excavated by the Egypt Exploration Society by Bryan Emery between 1966 and 1971. The graffiti include dedications to the god Imhotep with an important historical content, and masons' marks which show some of the construction history of the galleries. There is also a Greek graffito listing the contents of dreams or visions, and a series of dedications on bronze temple furniture which mention a hitherto unknown god. Jars with hieroglyphic signs shed light on one of the main characters found in the Greek Hermetic literature, and a selection of ostraca give insights into the management of the animal cults.