Some chapters (each by a different academic) have too much of the air of the professor looking down from a lectern at rows of eager students who will all by now be moving into their seventies yet there are still things to be learned and appreciated. Although half a century old (and so very much out of date in the detail), 'The Legacy of Egypt', part of a series of such books published by Oxford (Clarendon Press) on the later influence of many of the ancient civilisations, remains a useful summary of the contribution of Egypt to Western culture.