In Ancient Egypt: State and Society, Alan B. Lloyd attempts to define, analyse, and evaluate the institutional and ideological systems which empowered and sustained one of the most successful civilizations of the ancient world for a period in excess of three and a half millennia. The volume adopts the premise that all societies are the product of a continuous dialogue with their physical context - understood in the broadest sense - and that, in order to achieve a successful symbiosis with this context, they develop an interlocking set of systems, defined by historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists as culture. Culture, therefore, can be described as the sum total of the methods employed by a group of human beings to achieve some measure of control over their environment. Covering the entirety of the civilization, and featuring a large number of up-to-date translations of original Egyptian texts, Ancient Egypt focuses on the main aspects of Egyptian culture which gave the society its particular character, and endeavours to establish what allowed the Egyptians to maintain that character for an extraordinary length of time, despite enduring cultural shock of many different kinds.

In Ancient Egypt: State and Society, Alan B. Lloyd attempts to define, analyse, and evaluate the institutional and ideological systems which empowered and sustained one of the most successful civilizations of the ancient world for a period in excess of three and a half millennia. The volume adopts the premise that all societies are the product of a continuous dialogue with their physical context - understood in the broadest sense - and that, in order to achieve a successful symbiosis with this context, they develop an interlocking set of systems, defined by historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists as culture. Culture, therefore, can be described as the sum total of the methods employed by a group of human beings to achieve some measure of control over their environment. Covering the entirety of the civilization, and featuring a large number of up-to-date translations of original Egyptian texts, Ancient Egypt focuses on the main aspects of Egyptian culture which gave the society its particular character, and endeavours to establish what allowed the Egyptians to maintain that character for an extraordinary length of time, despite enduring cultural shock of many different kinds.

The experience of warfare shaped soldiers and their families in the ancient world. Drawing partly on modern studies of battle 'syndromes' this collection of essays examines this important phenomenon. Contributions include: Warrior Mentality in Homer (Hans van Wees); Hoplite Warfare in Ancient Greece (Stephen Mitchell); Homosexuality and Warfare in Ancient Greece (Daniel Ogden); The Moulding of Macedon's Army (Alan Lloyd); Morale and the Roman Experience of Battle (A.D.Lee); The Roman Army and Morality in War (Catherine Gilliver); and, Battle in Ancient Egypt: the Triumph of Horus or the Cutting Edge of the Temple Economy (Ian Shaw).

This book contains eleven papers on aspects of Greek religion from Minoans to the classical world. Striking similarities are revealed between religious ideas in Greece and non-Greek Asia. There are special studies of Apollo, Athena, and Dionysiac religion and new patterns are identified in the archaic and classical thought of Heraclitus, Herodotus and Sophocles. The contributors are: Bernard Dietrich, Walter Burkert, Catherine Osborne, J. K. Davies, Michael Clarke, A. C. Villing, Thomas Harrison, Seth L. Schein, Richard Seaford, Susan Deacy and Anne-France Morand.