The aims of this study are to appreciate more fully the nature of Middle Kingdom culture and social structure through an examination of their burial customs, within the Nile valley, and to gain a better understanding of the purpose of objects placed within the tomb.The study is limited to objects which can be said to be characteristic of the Middle Kingdom; wooden models and related material in the form of offering-trays and "concubine" figures. In order to study regional trends in the types and forms of models, these have been arranged into a series of corpora. Excluded from the study are unprovenanced models which would obscure any region patterns and comparative material from Nubia, which is not, strictly speaking, a part of Egyptian Nile valley culture.Chapter One traces the development of the wooden model corpus from the Old Kingdom through to isolated items in the New Kingdom. Through this it has been possible to create a different corpus for each developmental point and to identify the zenith of model production in the late 11 to early 12 dynasties. The corpus can be demonstrated to decline rapidly during the reign of Senwosret II.Chapters Two to Four deal in detail with model granaries, funerary and pilgrimage model boats, and model offering-bearers. Each model type can be demonstrated to exhibit regional trends in design.Model granaries of wood and terra-cotta have been shown to be theproduct of differing social rank, as well as of date. The model boatsexhibit a clear chronological development, as well as regionalpreferences for hull design. Model offering-bearers are shown to evolve in function from Old Kingdom personifications of "estates" to household or estate servants in the First Intermediate Period and Middle Kingdom.Offering-trays and "soul-houses" have been shown in Chapter Five to exhibit highly localised forms bciween the limits of their Nile valley production at Aswan in the south to Giza in the north.A re-interpretation of the so-called "concubine" figure category is presented in Chapter Six. The figures have been organised into types I to IV and shown to have a close association with the cult of Hathor as the hnr/hnrwt or ritual dancer.The wooden monl corpus is shown to come from a specific sector of Egyptian Middle Kingdom society; those holding titles and their dependents. The corpus is concentrated in the fertile and mineral richregion of Naga ed-Deir to Beni Hasan and has been shown to be anaccurate indicator of rank, its purpose being a magical means ofmaintaining a high standard-of-living. The other model types, mostlyin cheaper materials are found to belong largely to that part of thepopulation without rank.The study is based on unpublished fieldnotes, photographic archives, excavated material in museum collections and the available published reports.