This book draws on ancient Egyptian inscriptions in order to theorize the relationship between accounting and order. It focuses especially on the performative power of accounting in producing and sustaining order in society. It explores how accounting intervened in various domains of the ancient Egyptian world: the cosmos; life on earth (offerings to the gods; taxation; transportation; redistribution for palace dependants; mining activities; work organization; baking and brewing; private estates and the household; and private transactions in semi-barter exchange); and the cult of the dead. The book emphasizes several possibilities through which accounting can be theorized over and above strands of theorizing that have already been explored in detail previously. These additional possibilities theorize accounting as a performative ritual; myth; a sign system; a signifier; a time ordering device; a spatial ordering device; violence; and as an archive and a cultural memory. Each of these themes are summarized with further suggestions as to how theorizing might be pursued in future research in the final chapter of the book. This book is of particular relevance to all accounting students and researchers concerned with theorize accounting and also with the relevance of history to the project of contemporary theorizing of accounting.

Employing a wide variety of sources, this book discusses innovations in food processing and preservation from the Palaeolithic period through the late Roman Empire. All through the ages, there has been the need to acquire and maintain a consistent food supply leading to the invention of tools and new technologies to process certain plant and animal foods into different and more usable forms. This handbook presents the results of the most recent investigations, identifies controversies, and points to areas needing further work. It is the first book to focus specifically on ancient food technology, and to discuss the integral role it played in the political, economic, and social fabric of ancient society. Fully documented and lavishly illustrated with numerous photographs and drawings, it will appeal to students and scholars of both the arts and the sciences.

Professor Smith uses Nubia as a case study to explore the nature of ethnic identity. Recent research suggests that ethnic boundaries are permeable, and that ethnic identities are overlapping. This is particularly true when cultures come into direct contact, as with the Egyptian conquest of Nubia in the second millennium BC. By using the tools of anthropology, Smith examines the Ancient Egyptian construction of ethnic identities with its stark contrast between civilized Egyptians and barbaric foreigners - those who made up the 'Wretched Kush' of the title.