ABSTRACT
Primary evidence for the administration of Egypt is in such short supply that thestudy of the institutions and offices involved relies to a certain extent on analogy, often using models drawn from modern concepts, offices and institutions, which at best distort the picture available to us, and at worst are entirely misleading. Analogy can, in turn, lead to assumption: ‘if, as evidence suggests, the situation was x in the y period, we can assume, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that this was also the case during the z period.’ It is not possible, however, to write about ‘the administration in Egypt’ without taking into consideration the degree to which the political, environmental or economic situation within the country altered, as this significantly affected the way in which Egypt was governed. This chapter deals in detail with the period of the New Kingdom and succeeding centuries, as a means of illustrating the ways in which the situation changed, and also that these changes are not always immediately apparent in the sources available to us.
