<i>Decoding Signs of Identity</i> is the volume of proceedings resultingfrom the symposium with the same name and held in Leiden, 13-15 December2013, in the framework of the NWO research project SymbolizingIdentity: Identity marks and their relation to writing in New KingdomEgypt. The aim of the project, and indeed of the symposium, was toinvestigate identity marks of Ancient Egyptian workmen, both in aspecialist, in-depth manner, and in a more general, comparativeperspective. The reader will recognise both of these approaches in thepresent collection of papers. In the course of its three sections, thetopic is narrowed down from general considerations and non-Egyptiancases, to various sorts of Ancient Egyptian identity marks, and finallyto the specific marking system of the royal necropolis workforce of theEgyptian New Kingdom, which was the core material of the NWO project.This volume can be considered a follow-up to <i>Pictograms or PseudoScript?</i> (EU XXV, 2009), and testifies to the continuing scholarlyinterest in systems of identity marks, both in Egyptology and outside.