Ancient Egyptian literature

This was a "media revolution" which, according to Richard B. Parkinson, was the result of the rise of an intellectual class of scribes, new cultural sensibilities about individuality, unprecedented levels of literacy, and mainstream access to written materials.

[15] Its primary purpose was to serve as a shorthand script for non-royal, non-monumental, and less formal writings such as private letters, legal documents, poems, tax records, medical texts, mathematical treatises, and instructional guides.

[18] Coptic became the standard in the 4th century AD when Christianity became the state religion throughout the Roman Empire; hieroglyphs were discarded as idolatrous images of a pagan tradition, unfit for writing the Biblical canon.

[19] With pigments of carbon black and red ochre, the reed pen was used to write on scrolls of papyrus—a thin material made from beating together strips of pith from the Cyperus papyrus plant—as well as on small ceramic or limestone potsherds known as ostraca.

[20] It is thought that papyrus rolls were moderately expensive commercial items, since many are palimpsests, manuscripts that have had their original contents erased or scraped off to make room for new written works.

[24] The adoption of Greco-Roman writing tools influenced Egyptian handwriting, as hieratic signs became more spaced, had rounder flourishes, and greater angular precision.

Stones with inscriptions were frequently re-used as building materials, and ceramic ostraca require a dry environment to ensure the preservation of the ink on their surfaces.

[40] Throughout ancient Egyptian history, the ability to read and write were the main requirements for serving in public office, although government officials were assisted in their day-to-day work by an elite, literate social group known as scribes.

[41] As evidenced by Papyrus Anastasi I of the Ramesside Period, scribes could even be expected, according to Wilson, "...to organize the excavation of a lake and the building of a brick ramp, to establish the number of men needed to transport an obelisk and to arrange the provisioning of a military mission".

[48] The privileged status of the scribe over illiterate manual laborers was the subject of a popular Ramesside Period instructional text, The Satire of the Trades, where lowly, undesirable occupations, for example, potter, fisherman, laundry man, and soldier, were mocked and the scribal profession praised.

[49] A similar demeaning attitude towards the illiterate is expressed in the Middle Kingdom Teaching of Khety, which is used to reinforce the scribes' elevated position within the social hierarchy.

[51] Classic works, such as the Story of Sinuhe and Instructions of Amenemhat, were copied by schoolboys as pedagogical exercises in writing and to instill the required ethical and moral values that distinguished the scribal social class.

Menena, a draughtsman working at Deir el-Medina during the Twentieth dynasty of Egypt, quoted passages from the Middle Kingdom narratives Eloquent Peasant and Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor in an instructional letter reprimanding his disobedient son.

[32] Menena's Ramesside contemporary Hori, the scribal author of the satirical letter in Papyrus Anastasi I, admonished his addressee for quoting the Instruction of Hardjedef in the unbecoming manner of a non-scribal, semi-educated person.

[64] Old Kingdom texts served mainly to maintain the divine cults, preserve souls in the afterlife, and document accounts for practical uses in daily life.

[84] These texts usually adopt the formulaic title structure of "the instruction of X made for Y", where "X" can be represented by an authoritative figure (such as a vizier or king) providing moral guidance to his son(s).

[109] The Middle Kingdom genre of "prophetic texts", also known as "laments", "discourses", "dialogues", and "apocalyptic literature",[110] include such works as the Admonitions of Ipuwer, Prophecy of Neferti, and Dispute between a man and his Ba.

[84] In Middle Kingdom texts, connecting themes include a pessimistic outlook, descriptions of social and religious change, and great disorder throughout the land, taking the form of a syntactic "then-now" verse formula.

[84] Although it survives only in later copies from the Eighteenth dynasty onward, Parkinson asserts that, due to obvious political content, Neferti was originally written during or shortly after the reign of Amenemhat I.

Neferti entertains the king with prophecies that the land will enter into a chaotic age, alluding to the First Intermediate Period, only to be restored to its former glory by a righteous king— Ameny—whom the ancient Egyptian would readily recognize as Amenemhat I.

[149] The educational text Book of Kemit, dated to the Eleventh dynasty, contains a list of epistolary greetings and a narrative with an ending in letter form and suitable terminology for use in commemorative biographies.

[72] During the late Middle Kingdom, greater standardization of the epistolary formula can be seen, for example in a series of model letters taken from dispatches sent to the Semna fortress of Nubia during the reign of Amenemhat III (r. 1860–1814 BC).

[155] Wente describes the versatility of this epistle, which contained "proper greetings with wishes for this life and the next, the rhetoric composition, interpretation of aphorisms in wisdom literature, application of mathematics to engineering problems and the calculation of supplies for an army, and the geography of western Asia".

[158] Olivier Perdu, a professor of Egyptology at the Collège de France, states that biographies did not exist in ancient Egypt, and that commemorative writing should be considered autobiographical.

[161] In her discussion of the Ecclesiastes of the Hebrew Bible, Jennifer Koosed, associate professor of religion at Albright College, explains that there is no solid consensus among scholars as to whether true biographies or autobiographies existed in the ancient world.

[171] The annals of Ramesses II (r. 1279–1213 BC), recounting the Battle of Kadesh against the Hittites include, for the first time in Egyptian literature, a narrative epic poem, distinguished from all earlier poetry that served to celebrate and instruct.

[175] For example, the Nubian pharaoh Piye (r. 752–721 BC), founder of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty, had a stela erected and written in classical Middle Egyptian that describes with unusual nuances and vivid imagery his successful military campaigns.

[178] During the New Kingdom, scribes who traveled to ancient sites often left graffiti messages on the walls of sacred mortuary temples and pyramids, usually in commemoration of these structures.

[179] Modern scholars do not consider these scribes to have been mere tourists, but pilgrims visiting sacred sites where the extinct cult centers could be used for communicating with the gods.

[188] It was not until 1799, with the Napoleonic discovery of a trilingual (i.e. hieroglyphic, Demotic, Greek) stela inscription on the Rosetta Stone, that modern scholars had the resources to decipher Egyptian texts.

Inscribed hieroglyphics cover an obelisk in foreground. A stone statue is in background.
Egyptian hieroglyphs with cartouches for the name " Ramesses II ", from the Luxor Temple , New Kingdom
A flat limestone block with a painted, carved raised-relief of woman in spotted linen cloth, seated near table with food items. Painted hieroglyphs decorate the rest of the surface.
The slab stela of the Old Kingdom Egyptian princess Neferetiabet (dated c. 2590 –2565 BC), from her tomb at Giza , with hieroglyphs carved and painted on limestone [ 3 ]
A faded document with cursive hieratic handwriting in black ink, slightly torn and fragmented on the right
Abbott Papyrus , a record written in hieratic script; it describes an inspection of royal tombs in the Theban Necropolis and is dated to the 16th regnal year of Ramesses IX , c. 1110 BC.
A light-colored stone fragment with hieratic handwriting in black ink scrawled on its surface
An ostracon with hieratic script mentioning officials involved in the inspection and clearing of tombs during the Twenty-first dynasty of Egypt , c. 1070 –945 BC
Two black-haired Egyptian peasants dressed in white-colored linen garb, standing in a field while collecting papyrus plants, with a motif of green vegetation at the bottom, and cut-off lower portion of another scene with peasants in a field at the top
Egyptian peasants harvesting papyrus , from a mural painting in a Deir el-Medina tomb dated to the early Ramesside Period (i.e. Nineteenth dynasty )
Two stone columns supporting a roof, painted with faded colors and incised with writing of Egyptian hieroglyphs
Columns with inscribed and painted Egyptian hieroglyphs , from the hypostyle hall of the Ramesseum (at Luxor ) built during the reign of Ramesses II (r. 1279–1213 BC)
A painted, realistic stone statue of a black-haired, perhaps middle-aged man sitting cross-legged while holding a stone-carved depiction of a papyrus reading scroll in his lap
Seated statue of an Egyptian scribe holding a papyrus document in his lap, found in the western cemetery at Giza , Fifth dynasty of Egypt (25th to 24th centuries BC)
Wooden statue of the scribe Kaaper , 5th or 4th dynasty of the Old Kingdom , from Saqqara , c. 2500 BC
A stone fragment with brightly painted colors and raised-relief images of Egyptian hieroglyphs, written in vertical columns, set against a beige background
Hieroglyphs from the Mortuary Temple of Seti I , now in the British Museum
A flat stone surface, beige in color, with incised markings of Egyptian hieroglyphs written in clearly-marked horizontal columns
The stela of Minnakht, chief of the scribes , hieroglyph inscriptions, dated to the reign of Ay ( r . 1323–1319 BC)
A museum display of an ancient fragment of a papyrus document safeguarded by sealed thick glass, with cursive hieratic handwriting in black ink on its surface
One of the Heqanakht papyri , a collection of hieratic private letters dated to the Eleventh dynasty of the Middle Kingdom [ 72 ]
An ancient, torn and fragmented papyrus document, with cursive hieratic handwriting in black and red ink on its surface
A New Kingdom copy on papyrus of the Loyalist Teaching , written in hieratic script
A fragmented papyrus scroll slightly torn at the edges, with cursive hieratic handwriting in black ink
The Westcar Papyrus , although written in hieratic during the Fifteenth to Seventeenth dynasties, contains the Tale of the Court of King Cheops , which is written in a phase of Middle Egyptian that is dated to the Twelfth dynasty . [ 97 ]
Light gray stone surface with carved and painted images of two woman, a falcon-headed god, a black-haired man with a long goatee, a jackal-headed god, and Egyptian hieroglyphs inscribed along the top
A raised-relief depiction of Amenemhat I accompanied by deities; the death of Amenemhat I is reported by his son Senusret I in the Story of Sinuhe .
An anthropomorphic bird with a human head in ancient Egyptian style, colored in green, yellow, white, red, brown, and black
The ba in bird form, one component of the Egyptian soul that is discussed in the Middle Kingdom discourse Dispute between a man and his Ba
Cursive hieratic handwriting in black ink with inks of various colors used to paint pictures of men and anthropomorphic deities traveling through the afterlife in vignette scenes covering the central portion of the document as well as the top right
This vignette scene from the Book of the Dead of Hunefer ( Nineteenth dynasty ) shows his heart being weighed against the feather of truth . If his heart is lighter than the feather, he is allowed into the afterlife; if not, his heart is swallowed by Ammit .
A brown-skinned man in white-linen garb, seated and playing a stringed harp with both hands
A blind harpist , from a mural of the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt , 15th century BC
A stone fragment with cursive hieratic handwriting in black ink
Hieratic script on an ostracon made of limestone ; the script was written as an exercise by a schoolboy in Ancient Egypt. He copied four letters from the vizier Khay (who was active during the reign of Ramesses II ).
A stone stela with raised-relief images of a man seated with his son and wife, while a man stands to the right giving libations; Egyptian hieroglyphs are written in distinctly-marked horizontal columns at the bottom portion of the stela.
A funerary stela of a man named Ba (seated, sniffing a sacred lotus while receiving libations); Ba's son Mes and wife Iny are also seated. The identity of the libation bearer is unspecified. The stela is dated to the Eighteenth dynasty of the New Kingdom period.
Ground-level outside view of stone walls with raised-relief carvings of human figures and hieroglyphic writing; a doorway is positioned at the center; the top left portion shows a blue sky without clouds.
The Annals of Pharaoh Thutmose III at Karnak
Surface of a stone wall with incised graffiti artwork of a dog, highlighted by angled late afternoon light
Artistic graffiti of a canine figure at the Temple of Kom Ombo , built during the Ptolemaic dynasty
A large, ancient, black-colored stone block with written inscriptions covering one side of its surface, with pieces clearly broken off with now missing text
The trilingual Rosetta Stone in the British Museum