Inscriptions left by participants of ancient Egyptian expeditions in areas beyond the Nile Valley have traditionally been an important source of information. They are used in the study of state institutions, political, socio-economical history, and world outlook of ancient Egyptians. The reign of the king Djedkare was marked by the rise of the number of expeditionary texts and attested state expeditions. From the same reign onwards a new type of expeditionary inscriptions began to appear regularly. It was characterized by the presence of relatively detailed accounts of expeditionary forces including their number. However, did the rise of the number of attested missions in the late 5th Dynasty correspond to the activation of state expeditionary efforts? The paper demonstrates that there was probably no direct correspondence between the number of attested missions and the actual number of enterprises. The author argues that the development of the structure and content of expeditionary inscriptions may have been caused by the growing consolidation of expeditionary communities which developed their common cultural memory and identity. The reign of Djedkare became a turning point in this development probably due to its length and reformative activity of the king himself. The paper concludes that the formation of the corpus of expeditionary inscriptions was determined by many factors that belonged primarily to the spheres of culture and politics rather than economy. The interpretation of available written sources which tend to describe ideas, institutions and expected protagonists rather than actual practice will benefit from availability of new archaeological data.