Ancient Egyptian Literature

Travel was a crucial element of ancient Egyptian culture. An extensive traffic system by land and by water already existed as early as the Old Kingdom, including various means of transport that did not fundamentally change right through to the New Kingdom. Traveling activity attested for various professions demonstrates that Egyptian society exercised a high degree of mobility. In the majority of cases, a journey was undertaken within the scope of the traveler’s work and on behalf of the pharaoh. Travel had a significant impact on the Egyptian world-view as well as on the development of the
identity of Egyptian society as an entity.

The terms Dt and nHH have often been treated as synonyms reflecting notions related to the vastness of time. However, from the study of original source material – the texts and iconography compiled over some three millennia, and authored by those who surely had complete understanding of their subject matter – it becomes clear that those modern interpretations are somewhat questionable. Clues to the connotations which may be ascribed to Dt and nHH are perhaps most clearly apparent in texts and imagery from the reign of Tutankhamun – a time of some political upheaval during which it was more than usually important to express traditional mores with some clarity so as to demonstrate a return to the well-established ideology underpinning pharaonic culture prior to the Amarna interlude. Testing those indications against the wider range of extant literary material confirms that Dt and nHH were neither synonyms, nor were they entirely temporal in nature, but rather referenced a duality of ontological conditions which together were fundamental to the fabric of pharaonic ideology. The reappraisal of this duality of conditions allows the many texts and iconographic depictions surviving from dynastic Egypt to be considered from a new perspective – one providing deeper insight into the character of pharaonic culture. Moreover, it becomes apparent that the influences of an ideology which evolved during times pre-dating the pyramid builders permeated the philosophical and theological treaties of the scholars of ancient Greece and Rome, and thence into more recent times. At least two great gods may live on.

A new critical edition of the ancient Egyptian 'Jackal Hymn of the West' from the so-called Book of the Night, with hieroglyphic transcription, transliteration, translation, extensive commentary on the cryptographic texts, and cryptographic sign list. The present study improves upon many cryptographic readings proposed originally by Étienne Drioton and seeks to align the present "western" text more closely with its eastern, southern, and northern counterparts from the Book of the Day.

This article will examine the occurrence of the " Vanity Theme " in Mesopotamian wisdom literature and elsewhere. However, the main interest of this investigation lies in the list of rulers or illustrious men of old which is manifest in a variety of wisdom " Vanity Theme " compositions. We will argue that it will not suffice to speak about the " Vanity Theme " in various literatures of the ancient Near East and the Mediterranean. We should try to identify a particular literary expression that is associated with this type of composition. We contend that this expression is the list or naming of " Early Rulers " that comes to serve as an exemplum to the basic assertion of the " Vanity Theme. "

Les neiges d'antan: " Gobernantes antiguos " y el tema de la vanidad en la literatura sapiencial de Mesopotamia y más allá Este artículo examinará la aparición del " tema de la vanidad " en la literatura sapien-cial de Mesopotamia y más allá. Sin embargo, el interés principal de esta investiga-ción radica en la lista de gobernantes u hombres ilustres de antaño que se manifiesta en una variedad de composiciones sapienciales con el " tema de la vanidad ". Argüiremos que no es suficiente con hablar sobre el " tema de la vanidad " en las diversas literaturas del antiguo Cercano Oriente y el Mediterráneo. Deberíamos tratar de identificar una expresión literaria particular que esté asociada con este tipo de composición. Sostenemos que esta expresión es la lista o denominación de los

The latest Czech issue of Prague Egyptological Studies (XVIII/2017) is devoted to the 100th anniversary of the birth of Professor Zbyněk Žába (1917–1971), one of the founders of the Czech Institute of Egyptology, Faculty of Arts at the Charles University in Prague and its branch in Cairo. The issue is divided into two parts, namely studies dedicated to his life and work, and those that are devoted to the continuation of his research at the present times. Included are contributions describing the life and bibliography of Zbyněk Žába, his work in Egypt as part of the Czechoslovak Egyptology during the Cold War, his lecturing at Cairo and his connections to the Náprstek Museum of Asian, African and American Cultures in Prague. The continuity of research is presented by different studies analysing diverse architectural, historical and social aspects of the mastaba of Vizier Ptahshepses at Abusir that was the focus of Žába’s field work in Egypt. All the peer-reviewed papers and studies have abstracts in English, as well as English captions for all the figures, charts and tables.


V letošním roce si připomínáme 100 let od narození profesora Zbyňka Žáby (1917–1971), jednoho ze zakladatelů Českého (tehdy Československého) egyptologického ústavu Filozofické fakulty Univerzity Karlovy. Ke zmíněnému výročí bylo připraveno předkládané číslo Pražských egyptologických studií, které je rozděleno do dvou hlavních tematických celků. První část je věnována Žábovu životu a dílu, zatímco do druhé byly zařazeny příspěvky, které přímo či nepřímo vycházejí ze Žábových prací. 
První oddíl tohoto vydání se zaměřuje na osobu profesora Žáby a jeho odborný odkaz. Příspěvky shrnují jeho život, bibliografii, kontakty s egyptskou bohemistikou nebo práci na staroegyptské krásné literatuře. Žába projevoval také zájem o egyptské starožitnosti a kolegové z Národního muzea – Náprstkova muzea asijských, afrických a amerických kultur připravili zajímavou studii o Žábových kontaktech s muzeem. Články zahrnuté do druhého tematického okruhu navazují na Žábovy práce, a to zejména ty, které se týkají mastaby vezíra Ptahšepsese z doby 5. dynastie (24. století př. n. l.), kde Žába po dlouhou dobu vedl archeologické výzkumy. Volněji s ní souvisí studie, jež se soustředí na události z 1. tisíciletí př. n. l. v Údolí králů v oblasti dnešního Luxoru v Horním Egyptě.
Profesor Zbyněk Žába stál v čele Československého egyptologického ústavu až do své smrti. Toto číslo je důkazem jeho odborného významu a odkazu, na něž navazuje dnes již pátá generace českých egyptologů. Stále také pokračují archeologické práce v Abúsíru, na nichž se Zbyněk Žába podílel od samého počátku. Lze jej tedy považovat za jednoho ze zakladatelů současné moderní české egyptologie.

The book includes a complete study on the Ancient Egyptian didactic literature. All representatives of the genre and its characteristics are considered. Special attention is paid to the main concepts used in didactic literature. The different states of mind which a man should achieve in life in order to reach immortality in the netherworld are gathered and discussed. The proper behavior in society according to the teachings is discussed. The book presents also а full translation of three didactic texts – The maxims of Ptahhotep, The teaching of Ani and The teaching of Amenemope.

Due to the ephemeral nature of performance, material evidence for the content, context, and intention behind ancient Egyptian dramatic texts is extremely limited. What remains are the texts themselves (often in pieces) and iconographic evidence such as that found on the walls of the Temple of Horus at Edfu. There, illustrations of dramatic scenes appear in relief alongside the text of what translator H. W. Fairman entitled “The Triumph of Horus: An Ancient Egyptian Sacred Drama.” Inscribed sometime during the second century BCE, the Edfu text refers to a dramatic reenactment of the battle between Horus and Seth for the Egyptian throne, a performance tradition attested more than fifteen hundred years earlier on the stelae of Ikhernofret and the pharaoh Neferhotep I. For this reason, Fairman and others have referred to “The Triumph of Horus” as the oldest play in the world, suggesting its potential as a significant contribution to the early theatre history canon. In December of 2019, theatre students at the University of Maryland performed a staging of “The Triumph of Horus” as well as another important dramatic text from the Late Period, “The Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys,” as translated by R. O. Faulkner. The intention of this production was to determine if embodied practice could reveal new ways of understanding and transmitting knowledge about ancient Egyptian dramatic performance. This paper will discuss the development, rehearsal process, and outcome of this unique production, incorporating research methodology from the fields of theatre historiography and performance studies.

The practice to turn to young children to increase the armed forces of a state is far from being recent, but it is always delicate to estimate particularly for ancient civilizations. In Egypt, the child's condition was without any interest in the eyes of the elite men, whose documents are the only ones to have reached us, and the majority of the population had only a vague idea of their age. Diverse sources allow us, however, to understand the recruitment of the children in ancient Egypt.

Cleopatra, the celebrated Egyptian beauty was made immortal by Shakespeare when he described her: ‘Age Cannot Wither Her, Nor Custom Stale Her Infinite Variety’. In reality a consummate and a tactful politician she used her wit, not her beauty, to become the most powerful woman in the world. Cleopatra was not the ‘dark seductress’ she was made out to be, but a scholar and a tactful politician.

Many of the world's first written records have been found in the area of the ancient Near East, in what is today known as the Middle East. While many people are familiar with the ancient Israelite literature recorded in the Hebrew Bible, most Near Eastern literature remains a mystery. From an Antique Land lifts the veil from these fascinating writings, explaining the ancient stories in the context of their cultures.
From the invention of writing through the conquest of Alexander the Great, expert scholars examine literature originally written in Egyptian, Sumerian, Akkadian, Hittite, Ugaritic, Canaanite, Hebrew, and Aramaic. Each chapter includes an overview of the culture, a discussion of literary genres, and descriptions and short analyses of the major literary works. Photos of archaeological remains further illustrate these people and their writings.
Contributors: Gary Beckman, Carl S. Ehrlich, Benjamin R. Foster, Susan Tower Hollis, Ingo Kottsieper, Wayne T. Pitard, Gonzalo Rubio.

On the canal stelae erected by Dareios I, two residence cities of the Achaemenids are mentioned, which could not be identified beyond doubt until now. In this article, two new identification proposals will be made and explained. In addition, the journey of the Persian ruler mentioned in the stelae is reconstructed.

This research focuses on answering the question of to what extent and how did women in Ancient Egyptian society participate in funerals. While much work has been done to study the grave goods and burials of Ancient Egyptian, our understanding of what happened during the funeral remains limited. It can be argued that there is normally little evidence of how funerals were conducted in many cultures without ethnographic research to back it up, however the study of Ancient Egyptian funerary scenes and literature may provide an idea of what the funeral may have been like.

Values and norms for communication expressed in the ancient Egyptian treatise, The Teachings of Ptahhotep, are compared to current regulatory communication standards, especially the IFJ Declaration of Principles on the Conduct of Journalists, and to liberal and socialist ideologies. Ptahhotep argued in favour of basic equalities, respect, and the free flow of information and opinions, particularly for political speech, much like social democracy and political liberalism do. He also set limits regarding freedom of communication similarly: for hate speech, incitement to violence, defamation, invasion of privacy, and concentration of ownership. The parallels between the principles of communication ethics in ancient Egypt and today are partly explained with a look at similarly restructuring powers of innovative phonographic media (writing) then and prographic (electronic programming) media now, and partly with (probably indirect) influence. The article also asks whether the concept of ‘Western civilization’ should continue to exclude ancient Egypt.

يلعب نهر النيل دوراً مهماً في مصر, حيث يمد هذا النهر مصر بحوالي 98% من إحتياجاتها بالماء. ويمثل نهر النيل ظاهرة جغرافية وجيولوجية مميزة. حيث يجري منابعه الإستوائية في قلب أفريقيا, ثم يتجه شمالاً إلى البحر المتوسط ملتزماً بهذا الإتجاه. ولا يجري نهر النيل في إقليم طبيعي واحد مثل نهر الأمازون, بل يجري في عدة أقاليم متباينة, ويخترق حوالي 35 درجة من درجات العرض ليصل بين منابعه ومصبه.

The lecture tackles the pictorial nature of the ancient Egyptian writing to highlight several visual features that were creatively deployed by the skilled community of ancient Egyptian writers to enhance the reading process. The lecture traces the early foundations of premodern Arabic khiṭābah and its close relation to constructing oral/aural arguments in comparison with the analysis of balāghah that deals with the literary features of written texts, in order to highlight the importance of comparing both ancient Egyptian and Arabic premodern poetics. Moreover, the lecture breaks new ground in the discipline of comparative literature by establishing a collation between the two praise hymns of Ramsess II (d. 1213 BC) and Senwosret III (d. 1839 BC). This collation rediscovers how each eulogist built unique or similar images to describe the praised king. The lecture discusses several problematic questions of loanwords to pave the way for further research about the ancient Egyptian words that were inherited inside the dictionary of classic Arabic.

par Claude Vandersleyen.
—
Ounamon a été envoyé par Hérihor, le grand prêtre d’Amon, pour acheter du bois destiné à l’entretien ou à la construction de la grande barque du dieu, à Thèbes. C’était vers 1065 avant J.-C.

De cette mission, on conserve le récit fait par Ounamon sur papyrus, mais l’auteur s’est brusquement arrêté avant la fin de la deuxième page. Selon le sens donné aux toponymes énumérés par le voyageur et tels qu’on les comprenait depuis la première traduction, vers 1899, il serait parti de Tanis et aurait navigué sur la Méditerranée, passant par Tyr, Byblos ou même Chypre ; c’est à Byblos qu’il aurait dû acquérir le bois pour lequel il avait été envoyé. Mais « l’eau » sur laquelle il avait navigué était « le grand Ym de Kharou » ce qui ne peut être la Méditerranée ; c’est le « grand bras d’eau douce »  issu du Nil et se dirigeant vers l’est jusqu’aux lacs amers, c’est très probablement le Ouadi Toumilat.

Ounamon n’est pas allé à Byblos, ni à Tyr ou Chypre ; il devait se procurer du bois d’une source forestière à l’est du delta ; c’est là que se passent ses Mésaventures. Le papyrus sur lequel il avait commencé à en faire le récit a été découvert dans un pot de terre à el-Hiba et acheté en 1891 par Wladimir Golénischeff, son premier éditeur.

Détails et table des matières sur http://www.safran.be/proddetail.php?prod=CEA15

Nel capitolo XIII del De Iside et Osiride, Plutarco racconta che: “Ma quando Osiride fu di ritorno, egli [Tifone] ordì contro di lui un’insidia, raccogliendo settantadue congiurati e ottenendo la collaborazione della regina che governava in quel tempo l’Etiopia, di nome Aso. Tifone prese di nascosto le misure del corpo di Osiride, costruì un’arca di quelle dimensioni, molto bella e con splendidi ornamenti, e poi la portò nella sala del banchetto. Tutti la guardarono ammirati, e allora Tifone promise, come in un bel gioco, che l’avrebbe data in dono a quello che ci stesse dentro sdraiato proprio di misura.

Working on reconstructing the rhetorical system of cultures outside the traditional western system, especially for the more ancient cultures, is faced by many complexities. Some of which relate to the philological methodology of investigating the different elements of oral and written traditions in those cultures via its surviving written documents i.e. the methodological approach within the discipline itself. But the most difficult struggle that those voiceless cultures are facing is related to the Euro-centric approach which mainly represents and examines the other based on its Western concepts, retheorizing and reconceptualizing the other’s image for their own western audiences.

Songbook for ancient Egypt music video (http://music.ancientgebts.org). Includes exercises, plus sing a song in hieroglyphic lyrics! Learn the lyrics in Tigrigna, Amarigna, English and hieroglyphs and sing along!

To have Legesse Allyn speak at your next event, please visit http://keynotespeaker.ancientgebts.org

For the print version of this book and others in the book series for your library, you can order it from Amazon.com at the following link...
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw/102-5565860-1204124?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=%27Legesse%20Allyn%27

The article comprehends a discussion of a short invocation in Pap. New York 35.9.21,
XXVII,8, in Pap. Brooklyn 47.218.138, x+XV,7, in Pap. Berlin P. 3037, rt. and on the eastern wall, H
2 of the temple in Hībis. It is shown that in this egyptian ritual beneath the semitic passage ’e/ilka
„Your (m.) Gott“, written in Hieroglyphics, also JHWH is mentioned in a short form of his name as Yw
for protection.

This paper seeks to expose the Cannibal Hymn (Pyramid Texts, Utterances 273-274) as a research subject, presenting the first academic studies about it. Through a analytical approach of the historical context in which this part of Egyptian tradition was transferred from orality into  a corpus of Egyptian funerary literature, the so called Pyramid Texts, and the key elements of that civilization, this paper investigates how much the text is related to Egyptian day-by-day.

This course presents a broad survey of historical forces at work over the past 6,000 years, examining the manners in which human societies have organized themselves along categories of race, ethnicity, class, and gender to meet the challenges of the increasing human population and its demands on natural resources: thus, it examines continuity and change in societies over time, in different places, and among various peoples.

يختص هذا الكتاب الجدير بالاهتمام بعرض حياة شخصية مصرية قديمة تبوأت مكاناً بارزاً وهاماً فى عصر فريد ورائع رغم أسراره الملغزة وتعدد نظرياته العويصة التى زاد من تعقيدها والتباسها جنوح بعض المتخصصين إلى الأخذ بكثرة البديهيات والتأويلات والافتراضات. لقد عاش الأب الإلهى آى فى العصر المعروف باسم عصر العمارنة وعاصر عدداً كبيراً من شخصياته الهامة وأبرزهم امنحوتب الرابع أخنآتون وسمنخكارع وتوت عنخ آمون، علاوة على تداخل حياته وتشابكها مع تى (زوجة امنحوتب الثالث) ونفرتيتى وابنتها عنخس إن آمون والجنرال حورمحب. أضف إلى ذلك أنه تقلد عدة مناصب رفيعة ربطته بالبلاط الملكى العمارنى أثناء حكم امنحوتب الرابع أخنآتون وسمنخكارع وتوت عنخ آمون والتى كان من أبرزها رئيس الفرسان والمعلم الملكى والوزير، غير أنه لم يكن هناك أهم من توليه عرش مصر عقب الوفاة المفاجئة لمليكه الأخير توت عنخ آمون. وتعد هذه الحالة من المرات القليلة التى يشاهد فيها قصة حياة ملك مصرى قديم منذ دخوله بلاط ملكى وترقيه فيه حتى يحين أوانه وتقوده الظروف وحسن الطالع إلى الجلوس على عرش مصر، درة العالم القديم وكبرى وأعظم بلدانه.

In the story of Sinuhe, a royal decree reaches the protagonist, inviting his return to Egypt. The copy of this fictional decree references Sinuhe’s desire to greet the queen at lines B 185–186, which selection includes a supposed hapax legomenon, {dpts}=s. This article provides a brief summary of prior scholarly approaches to the problematic group and proposes a new solution to its analysis and translation in context.

Despite the arguments put forward by J. van Seters in 1964, most scholars still date the events described in the Admonitions of Ipuwer to the First Intermediate Period. The present paper challenges this view and favours a date in the Second Intermediate Period.

The authors undertake a refutation of the arguments advocating the earlier dating. A number of arguments are provided to show that this literary composition couldn’t emerge prior to the Late Middle Kingdom (revising the arguments offered by J. van Seters, S. Quirke, W. Grajetzki). The latter date is indicated by the titles and bureaus occurring in this text and the theophoric name of Ipuwer. It is further argued that the facts described in the Admonitions do not match the ecological situation of the First Intermediate Period. It it likely that the events described in the text took place some time after the prosperous reigns of Neferhotep I and Sebekhotep IV. The authors suppose that the text deals with the invasion of the Hyksos in the first half of 17th century BC, which caused deep political, economical, social and cultural changes.

"The First Tale of Setne Khaemwas" 4.35-4.36 has most often been understood to mean that Setne returned to the tomb of Naneferkaptah "With a forked stick in his hand and a brazier of fire on his head," as a gesture of penance for having stolen the Magic Book of Thoth. It is here argued that the proper translation is "with a spike and staff in his hand, and a fiery brazier above his head," and that this is a description of an apotropaic ritual designed to protect Setne from the magical power of the ghosts of Naneferkaptah and his wife Ihweret