Professor Barbieri has published another ground-breaking new book. Ancient Egypt and Early China: State, Society and Culture (University of Washington Press, 2021), is the first extended comparative study of New Kingdom Egypt and early imperial China. While it has become common in recent scholarship to compare Early China with Classical Greece or the Roman Empire, he argues that a comparison with Ancient Egypt is more appropriate and instructive, despite the great separation in time and space. The book employs a combination of textual, art historical, and archaeological analyses within seven comparative case studies, focusing on geography, statecraft, diplomacy, ritual, law, scribal culture, and mortuary culture.