The concept of pharaonic Egypt as a unified, homogeneous, and isolated cultural entity is misleading. Ancient Egypt was a rich tapestry of social, religious, technological, and economic interconnections among numerous cultures from disparate lands. In fifteen chapters divided into five thematic groups, Pharaoh's Land and Beyond uniquely examines Egypt's relationship with its wider world. The first section details the geographical contexts of interconnections by examining ancient Egyptian exploration, maritime routes, and overland passages. In the next section, chapters address the human principals of association: peoples, with the attendant difficulties of differentiating ethnic identities from the record; diplomatic actors, with their complex balances and presentations of power; and the military, with its evolving role in pharaonic expansion. Natural events, from droughts and floods to illness and epidemics, also played significant roles in this ancient world, as examined in the third section. The final two sections explore the physical manifestations of interconnections between pharaonic Egypt and its neighbors, first in the form of material objects and second, in the powerful exchange of ideas. Whether through diffusion and borrowing of knowledge and technology, through the flow of words by script and literature, or through exchanges in the religious sphere, the pharaonic Egypt that we know today was constantly changing-and changing the cultures around it. This illustrious work represents the first synthesis of these cultural relationships, unbounded by time, geography, or mode.

The origin of the second Kingdom of Kush (c. 850 BCE-350 CE) has been the subject of much discussion and debate over the years. The kingdom that arose at Napata lasted over a thousand years, evolving over time and continuing to influence the polities that emerged after the kingdom broke apart in about 350 CE. One of the kingdom's modern legacies is as an early example of an African state, allowing for an exploration of larger theoretical questions surrounding state formation, religion and ideology, political economy, identity, and intercultural interaction. At the same time, the Kingdom of Kush has played an important and controversial role in the development of Black studies, the discourse of Afrocentrism, and a consideration of the asymmetries in the racial discourse surrounding Egypt in particular and Africa more generally, both in their historical and contemporary incarnations. The Origins and Afterlives of Kush conference was held at the University of California, Santa Barbara, July 25-27, 2019. Organized by Stuart Tyson Smith with the assistance of Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei and sponsored by the UCSB Department of Anthropology with support from the College of Letters and Sciences and the Institute for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Research, it featured daily discussion sessions and twenty-one presentations, of which ten are published in this special volume of the Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections.