John Baines is Professor Emeritus of Egyptology and Fellow of The Queen's College at the University of Oxford, where he taught from 1976 to 2013. His principal areas of interest are Egyptian art, literature, religion, self-presentation, the position of writing in Egyptian society, and modelling social forms. He is currently working on elite uses of the wider environment, particularly in forms and practices, such as hunting, that must be approached indirectly because they leave little physical trace.