Ancient Egyptian Literature

An Anthology

John L. Foster, John L. Foster

• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780292781931
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Crítica literaria antigua y clásica

A beautifully translated collection sampling all the major genres of ancient Egyptian literature. Poetry, stories, hymns, prayers, and wisdom texts found exquisite written expression in ancient Egypt while their literary counterparts were still being recited around hearth fires in ancient Greece and Israel. Yet, because of its very antiquity and the centuries during which the language was forgotten, ancient Egyptian literature is a newly discovered country for modern readers. This anthology offers an extensive sampling of all the major genres of ancient Egyptian literature. It includes all the texts from John Foster's previous book Echoes of Egyptian Voices, along with selections from his Love Songs of the New Kingdom and Hymns, Prayers, and Songs: An Anthology of Ancient Egyptian Lyric Poetry, as well as previously unpublished translations of four longer and two short poems. Foster's translations capture the poetical beauty of the Egyptian language and the spirit that impelled each piece's composition, making these ancient masterworks sing for modern readers. An introduction to ancient Egyptian literature and its translation, as well as brief information about the authorship and date of each selection, completes the volume. "This exceptional sampling of one of the world's most ancient literatures offers more than 40 hymns, stories, prayers, and songs revolving around religion, the Pharaohs, life, death, love, and more..... Highly recommended for all literary collections, this is also of interest to comprehensive collections of Egyptology, Near Eastern history, world literature in translation, and religion." — Library Journal "Older than the Buddha and the Bhagavad Gita, these poems constitute a truly ancient literature, and Foster's rich and textured translations make genuine love poems and exhortations to the gods out of what, to most of us, are just pictures." — Booklist

GLOSSARY

Abu. The town of Elephantine in the far south of Egypt proper, near the present-day city of Aswan. Source of stone for monuments and the collecting point for ivory from the south.

Abydos. Very ancient Egyptian city north of Thebes, seat of the kings of Dynasties O, I, and II (the Thinite Period) and prime religious center of Egypt; home of the worship of Osiris.

Achmim. City some hundred miles north of Luxor; center for the worship of Min.

Admonitions. A subcategory of instructional or didactic literature (“wisdom texts”) warning against moral and social evils.

Adversary, The. See Apophis.

Akhenaten, King. Monotheist king of later Dynasty XVIII. Reigned 1351–1334 B.C. He worshipped a single god, the Aten, denying the existence, or at least the worship, of the other gods, and initiating profound changes in Egyptian religion and art. His religion did not outlast him.

Amenemhat I, King. First king of Dynasty XII, toward the beginning of the Middle Kingdom. Reigned 1976–1947 B.C.

Amenemopet. Author of The Wisdom of Amenemopet, probably from Dynasty XX. Perhaps the finest of the moral instruction texts to survive from ancient Egypt. Written in verse lines in the original.

Ameny. Shortened form for King Amenemhat I. See entry above.

Amun. The Hidden One, King of the Gods. An ancient god who rose to prominence at Thebes during Dynasty XI and the Middle Kingdom to become the great cosmic, imperial, and universal god of New Kingdom Egypt.

Amunenshi. Ruler of Upper Retenu in twentieth-century B.C. Syria-Palestine. Appears in The Tale of Sinuhe.

Amun-Rê. Fuller name of Amun (see prior entry) as that god absorbs the power and functions of Rê, the earlier sun and creator god of Heliopolis.

Andjety. Ancient god worshipped in the Delta and precursor of Osiris, into whose nature he blends.

Anglo-Saxon. Also called Old English (A.D.450–1100).

Ani. Owner of one of the finest and fullest copies of The Book of the Dead. Lived at the end of Dynasty XVIII.

Antagonist, The. See Apophis.

Anubis. God of the dead, of embalming, and of the necropolis. The prime funerary god before the rise of Osiris.

Apophis. Cosmic serpent-demon who attacked the sun god’s (Rê’s) barque each night, thus endangering the cosmic order. Defeated each night, he was reborn each day. One of the fixed elements in the universe, symbolizing chaos; hence, the Great Antagonist or the Adversary of the sun god.

Asheru. The sacred lake and divine precinct about the Temple of Mut at Karnak in ancient Thebes.

Asiatics. Peoples to the northeast of Egypt in Syria-Palestine and Mesopotamia (the Fertile Crescent in general).

Aten (Aton). Sun god symbolized by the disc of the sun. Becomes the sole god during the reign of Akhenaten in the fourteenth century B.C.

Atum. The Old One (the Totality) and Lord of the Ennead. An early version of the sun god and creator of the universe. The center of his worship lay at Heliopolis. Succeeded in his functions by Rê, also of Heliopolis.

Atum-Horakhty. Atum as he was identified and fused with Horus of the Two Horizons, the figure of the rising sun of the new day. In this conception, Rê himself was the sun as seen during the major part of the day and Atum was the old, or setting, sun.

Ba. An aspect of the personality, according to the ancient Egyptians. Continuing after death and often described or depicted in the form of a bird. The closest approximation (but not an exact equivalent) is our word “soul.”

Baboon. Animal sacred to Thoth and often a name for the god.

Barque of Rê. The ship in which the sun god travels at night to move through the darkness from the west to the east to begin the new day.

Bastet. The feline goddess of Bubastis.

Battle of Kadesh. Battle fought by Ramesses II in his fifth regnal year (1275 B.C.) against the Hittites at the town of Qadesh (Kadesh) on the Orontes River in Syria-Palestine. It was, in effect, a defeat for the Egyptian forces; but the personal valor of the king was celebrated in a kind of mini-epic poem, The Battle of Kadesh, which survives in many copies, both on papyri and on monuments.

Bee. Emblem of Lower Egypt. See “He of the Sedge and the Bee.”

Beginning, The. Egyptian term for the moment or time of creation, “The First Occasion.” The account takes various forms but describes the emergence of order from chaos. The primary account has the creator god appearing on a primal hill that emerges from the midst of the primeval waters and on which he stands to accomplish the work of creation.

Belles-lettres. “Literature” as works of art (for ancient Egypt, consisting primarily of tales and myths, various types of instructional or didactic material [“wisdom texts”], complaints and laments, hymns, prayers, and love songs). Not “literature” in the broader sense of anything written down.

Bitter Lakes. Area of the northeastern Delta?

Black Land. A common name for Egypt, referring to the black of the fertile soil as opposed to the “red” of the sterile desert.

Book of Kemyt. Text from Dynasty XI or XII, later used as a schoolboy text during the New Kingdom. A compendium of useful vocabulary, forms, and usages for the aspiring scribe.

Busiris. Ancient city in the central Delta. In religious traditions the home of Osiris. The name derives from Pr Wsir, “the House of Osiris.”

Byblos. Very ancient city on the eastern Mediterranean coast, located in what is now Lebanon. There was Egyptian contact with Byblos from the earliest dynasties.

Cartouche. The oval within which were written the fourth and fifth names (the prenomen and nomen) in the royal titulary.

Champollion, Jean François (1790–1832). Decipherer of Egyptian hieroglyphic writing in 1822.

Chaos. The condition of things before creation of the universe by the sun god. Conceived of as a turmoil of water, wind, and darkness. Chaos continues outside the formed universe, and beings like Apophis try to force a return to the original state of disorder.

Chaucer, Geoffrey (ca. 1343–1400). Most famous poet writing in Middle English.

Children, The. The royal offspring of both sexes, at least in The Tale of Sinuhe.

City of Sun. Ancient Heliopolis, center of worship of the sun god.

Coffin Texts. Religious texts consisting mainly of spells to aid the deceased. Carved or painted on the coffins of nobles from Dynasty XI to XVII, they had a wider range of themes and subject matter than the Pyramid Texts, which were limited to kings and queens.

Coming Forth. Literally, the ability of the deceased’s spirit to emerge from the tomb after death to enjoy the benefits of this world. A kind of resurrection — especially for Sinuhe after his reception by the king following the living death of his lifetime exile.

Coptic. The final phase of the ancient Egyptian language (from the third century A.D. on), written in the Greek alphabet with additional characters derived from the hieroglyphs. The only stage of the Egyptian language to write out the vowels. Coptic was gradually replaced by Arabic after the Arab Conquest in A.D. 640.

Craftsman, The. Epithet for the god Ptah in his function as inventor of crafts and protector of artisans.

Creator God. The first god and the one who created the universe from chaos. In various versions of the myth and over the long span of Egyptian history, he was the cosmic Horus, Atum, Rê, Ptah, Amun, Aton, or Amun-Rê.

David, King. Israelite king of the United Monarchy. Reigned ca. 1000–961 B.C.

Day Barque. The skyship used by Rê while crossing the heavens during the day.

Death the Crocodile. Personification of the moment of death as being seized and devoured by crocodiles lurking in the Nile. An unpleasant way to die.

Deir el-Medineh. Village of craftsmen and artists who decorated the rock-cut royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings during the New Kingdom. Finds from a trash-pit there have resulted in thousands of ostraca, many with portions of the classic literature of ancient Egypt.

Delta. The northern portion of Egypt (north of modern Cairo) where the Nile River fans out to empty into the Mediterranean Sea. Also called Lower Egypt.

Demotic. A very cursive form of the hieratic writing of the ancient Egyptian language. Used in books and documents primarily from Dynasty XXV to the Roman period (ca. 750 B.C. to fourth century A.D.).

Denderah. Egyptian town just north of Thebes. Sacred to Hathor, whose Ptolemaic temple there is one of the best preserved in Egypt.

Diodorus Siculus. Roman historian, flourishing under Caesar and Augustus (ca.60–30 B.C.). Wrote a world history, Book I of which dealt with Egypt.

Djoser (Zoser), King. Ruled during Dynasty III (ca. 2665–2645 B.C.). Owner of the Step Pyramid at Saqqara, the world’s first monumental building made of stone.

Dynasty. Term used to designate a coherent succession of Egyptian rulers, usually a “royal house”; that is, several generations of one family succeeding to the throne, son after father. In actuality, the succession was not this neat. Nevertheless, the priest Manetho (see entry below) used this principle to divide the historical span of ancient Egypt into thirty-one such dynasties.

Eastern Horus, The. The cosmic Horus as lord of lands east of Egypt. Possibly Horakhty, “Horus of the Two Horizons,” where the sun rose and set.

Eight Great Gods (Ogdoad). The Eight Great Gods personify elements of the chaos preceding creation of the world, according to the traditions of Hermopolis. They existed in male-female pairs and were Nun and Naunet (the primitive watery abyss), Heh and Hehet (infinite space), Kek and Keket (darkness), and Amun and Amaunet (invisibility or hidden power).

Elephantine. City at the south of Egypt, near the present city of Aswan.

Elder Horus, The. The ancient cosmic sky and sun god depicted as a falcon (whose eyes were the sun and the moon) and known from earliest dynastic times. To be distinguished from the child Horus, son of Isis and Osiris.

El-Kab. Town in southern Egypt about halfway between Thebes (Luxor) and Elephantine (Aswan). Home of the tutelary goddess of Upper Egypt, Nekhbet.

Elohist, The. Anonymous Israelite writer who composed the northern version (Ephraimite) of the traditions of Israel. Fl. ca. 850 B.C....