How did the provincial elites of Upper Egypt in the New Kingdom manage to reach the highest spheres of the Pharaonic state? What were their strategies for staying and prospering there? What was their specific relationship to royal power? Based on a diachronic study spanning several centuries (1539-1077 BCE), this book offers some answers to these questions. Drawing on the anthropology of kinship and Social Network Analysis (SNA), the author puts historical and prosopographical data into perspective and highlights major changes in the relationships of provincial notables, both among themselves and with royal power. A comparison of the structure of the various reconstructed networks reveals major changes in the behaviour of these elites. Placing them in their historical, geographical and political contexts helps us to understand the reasons for the gradual loss of pharaonic influence over southern Egypt at the end of the New Kingdom. During the 18th Dynasty, the provincial notables of Upper Egypt gathered around the royal power in a veritable court society, but this situation changed from the beginning of the Ramesside period, when these elites seemed to emancipate themselves and even compete with the pharaoh’s power over this geographical area. We are thus moving from a court society, in which the almighty pharaoh is represented by the granting of high state offices, to a society of networks, in which social reproduction and strategies, especially marriage strategies, are fully operational.