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This volume publishes, for the first time, approximately fifty late Egyptian texts from the Suzuki collection held at Tokai University, Japan. The project is a result of a five-year collaboration between Tokai University, Yale University, Johns Hopkins University, The University of Michigan, and the Staatliche Museum zu Berlin. Professor Suzuki formed his collection in the early 1960s when he was based in Cairo. The bulk of the collection, now housed in the Department of Asian Civilization, School of Letters at Tokai University as part of the Ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern Collection (AENET), consists of early demotic texts. There is also one Third Intermediate period hieratic text concerned with temple land, and a few small Greek fragments from the Byzantine period. The texts published here present an interesting range of document types and examples of demotic handwriting, and a few surprises. Among the more intriguing pieces are a fine word list and a new mythological narrative.

The history of Ptolemaic Egypt has usually been doubly isolated--separated both from the history of other Hellenistic states and from the history of ancient Egypt. The Last Pharaohs, the first detailed history of Ptolemaic Egypt as a state, departs radically from previous studies by putting the Ptolemaic state firmly in the context of both Hellenistic and Egyptian history. More broadly still, J. G. Manning examines the Ptolemaic dynasty in the context of the study of authoritarian and premodern states, shifting the focus of study away from modern European nation-states and toward ancient Asian ones. By analyzing Ptolemaic reforms of Egyptian economic and legal structures, The Last Pharaohs gauges the impact of Ptolemaic rule on Egypt and the relationships that the Ptolemaic kings formed with Egyptian society. Manning argues that the Ptolemies sought to rule through--rather than over--Egyptian society. He tells how the Ptolemies, adopting a pharaonic model of governance, shaped Egyptian society and in turn were shaped by it. Neither fully Greek nor wholly Egyptian, the Ptolemaic state within its core Egyptian territory was a hybrid that departed from but did not break with Egyptian history. Integrating the latest research on archaeology, papyrology, theories of the state, and legal history, as well as Hellenistic and Egyptian history, The Last Pharaohs draws a dramatically new picture of Egypt's last ancient state.