This volume reconstructs tendencies and laws of literary discourse in Egypt through an analysis of Egyptian literary texts about foreign countries and foreigners. It highlights the tension between the two poles of "topos" and "mimesis," meaning between the literary transcendence of accepted thought patterns, which generally refer to foreign lands as a geographical entity or to foreigners as an ethnic group (primarily in wisdom literature), and the innovative character of narrative literature from the Middle and New Kingdoms, where non-Egyptians are presented as autonomous individuals. This model is then applied to the appearance of the god Seth in religious discourse and to the cultural-historical development in the early Middle Kingdom.