the distinction between religion and magic is not necessarily sharp and why, unlike in the West, one is not necessarily more pious or morally privileged than the other.
Nevertheless, certain distinctions can be identified between different modalities of engagement with the gods. They appear to arise in connection to the hierarchical structure of Egyptian society, with access to religious praxis or knowledge apparently restricted by social class. Baines criticizes some modern Egyptologists' dismissal of "special knowledge of hierarchies of knowledge," citing in support of the opposite view the growing body of information, some of it from outside Egyptology per se, on Egyptian initiation rites and esoteric (Hermetic) texts. Such issues must be acknowledged as being in the background of examining instances of magic in Egyptian culture.
Magic as restricted access. Baines says that some Egyptologists urge the view that Egyptian religion was completely open in order not to associate themselves with popular-culture presentations of so-called secret-of-the-universe Egyptian mystery texts. Alternatively, some have suggested that "the knowledgeable in Egypt were monotheists but did not publicize their beliefs, while the rest remained polytheists." Baines sees problems with each approach as insufficient to the task of reconciling it to what is known about how Egyptian culture functioned. What remains to be explained is evidence of religious distinctions in ancient Egypt, and how they can be interpreted. Baines's strategy is to begin with "the existence of [social] inequality in antiquity" and show how that organizing principle of society can help sort out what looks to be the religious content of socially constructed knowledge. He notes that access to religious observance "was restricted, at least as regards cult, entry into the temples, and related approaches to the gods; limited physical or organizational access is a first basis for rest...