The Reception of Demotic Narrative

This chapter discusses aspects of Demotic Egyptian prose narratives of the Greek and Roman periods, viewed against the background of the growing significance of reception theory in the study of ancient Egyptian literature in general. It reviews the development since the nineteenth century of ideas on the ancient audiences for Demotic literature. The problematic evidence for readers and performance is examined, to a very limited extent with reference to the nature of the finds and find-spots of manuscripts, but chiefly by paying attention to their format and their contents. As for the relationship with oral literature, it is suggested that the material essentially belonged to a written tradition, and was designed primarily for oral performance within temple communities.

Egyptian Life, by and with Literary Texts

This chapter discusses aspects of Egyptian ‘fine literature’ (belles-lettres), and combines general literary and cultural-scientific theoretical considerations with specific case studies from both Middle Egyptian and Late Egyptian literature. It addresses questions of form and function, producers and recipients, as well as discussing the search for empirical readers. Also discussed are the question of original manuscripts and the potential significance of writing errors.

Ancient Egyptian Literature

This chapter discusses the genre and style of Ancient Egyptian literature. Through the application of lexicostatistics, it analyses a total of fifty texts. Having examined the vocabulary size of Middle Egyptian narratives, Late Egyptian narratives, speeches, and dialogues, the texts under investigation are grouped into genres such as ‘religious texts’, ‘artful prose’, ‘poetry’, ‘teachings’, and so on. On the basis of texts existing in several copies, it becomes apparent that a text maintains a constant vocabulary richness independent of its length. Each copy therefore facilitates the determination of the genre of a text. Furthermore, the language of a text (Middle or Late Egyptian) proves not to be decisive for the vocabulary richness of a text, but rather it is genre that is indicative. The chapter also investigates the question of the practical function of texts, which can best be detected during experimental reading.

Sensuous Experience, Performance, and Presence in Third Intermediate Period Biography

This chapter analyses biographical motifs relating to sensory experience found in inscriptions largely belonging to one tenth-century bc priestly family in Thebes. The four statues which are the focus of discussion (CG 42225; CG 42226; CG 42227; CG 42228) were dedicated in the temple precinct of Karnak by Hor IX for himself, his ancestor, and his wife. Inscriptions on a statue of Horakhbit I (CG 42231) from Karnak are also treated. Celebration of the senses is found in these texts through the fusion of biography with themes known from harpists' songs, a genre previously associated with tombs; the use of myrrh, a pleasurable and ritual substance; and through phraseology that mobilises the sensuous geographies of sacred space. Study of how such motifs relate to other features of biography across the statues offers insights into transformations of more than one genre and developments in the function of statues in temples.

The Practice of Literature

This chapter discusses the ways in which a literary criticism for Ancient Egypt can be embedded in the contemporary practice of literature. This is distinguished from a criticism rooted in visions of literature as an autonomous artefact of culture. It examines evidence for the practitioners of literature and their audience, modes and occasions of reading, degrees of formal structure (including use of metre), genre, and the nature of publication, to argue that oral and written literature were not separate categories, either of practice or cultural evolution. It is emphasised that criticism of Egyptian literature needs to focus on the manner of its recitation against its survival as a written artefact, and that genres of ritual and rhetoric overlap in form and performance with those of narrative, lyric, and instruction.

Amunnakht, Scribe and Poet of Deir el-Medina

Amunnakht, scribe in the necropolis of Deir el-Medina, is a well-known figure in Ancient Egyptian history. He was active in the reigns of Ramses III to Ramses VI. From his quill we have not only administrative records but also a series of literary and didactic texts. In addition to the six literary pieces, mostly fragments, ascribed to him previously, a new one, the fragment of a hymn or eulogy to one of these kings, is preserved in Ostracon O Berlin P 14262. After a hieroglyphic transliteration, phonetic transcription, translation, and detailed commentary, the question of whether Amunnakht was the author or simply the copyist of this and some — or all — of the other texts in question is discussed.

Lone Heroes or Collaborative Communities? On Sumerian Literature and its Practitioners

The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (ETCSL), a ten-year project to edit and analyse ancient Sumerian literature, came to an end on 31 August 2006. Like Egyptian, Sumerian is one of the world's oldest written literatures, with a classical corpus comprising some 500 compositions attested in many thousands of manuscripts from the early second millennium bc. This chapter reflects on how ETCSL has changed the practice of literary Sumerology, what it has not been able to achieve, and what could and should still be done. In particular, it argues that the collaborative working that projects like ETCSL foster has brought Sumerological practice much closer to ancient ideals of literacy — ideals that have themselves come to light through quantitative analysis of the ETCSL online corpus.

Papyrus Queen’s College Recto

The manuscript which is the topic of this chapter contains the first literary text in abnormal hieratic, a script used mainly for documentary texts in the Twenty-fifth and Twenty-sixth Dynasties. As far as it is preserved and comprehensible, the plot seems to revolve around a court proceeding between two priests at the Heliopolitan temple of Atum-Re-Harakhty. The text contains oaths by the sun-god, as well as an interesting dialogue between a king called Usermaatre and the chief god of Heliopolis. The story ends with a verdict, declaring one of the priests ‘not guilty’ and his opponent the opposite. One of the main characters is the prince of Heliopolis-Athribis called Hem-na-nefi, a pseudonym for one of the several Twenty-fifth Dynasty holders of this title in the 12th and 13th Lower Egyptian nomes named Bak-en-na-nefu. The text's style and rhetoric suggest it is at least a semi-literary juridical narrative.

Reading Greek Literature

This chapter looks at Ancient Greek texts as a foil for Ancient Egyptian literature. Scholars who work on cultural products of premodern societies will always be faced with the question whether, by using modern terminology, they are unconsciously importing anachronistic and thus inappropriate concepts into their research. The word ‘literature’ implies literacy, but it is an open question whether the fundamental qualities of writing can reside in texts which have been produced and received as written and read texts. The chapter argues that the awareness of the special quality of literary texts can indeed be found in the earliest Greek texts. It compares the ways in which speaker and addressee are constructed in early oral poetry (such as lyrics and epic) and early written texts (such as epigrams) and argues that there is no clear-cut boundary between the two modes.

Literatures in Dialogue

This chapter operates in the sphere of influence-free literary comparison, comparing what Babylonian and Middle Egyptian literature say about speech. It argues that in Middle Egyptian literature, speech is allotted an ideological charge which it lacks in Babylonian works. This asymmetry reveals differences in broader cultural attitudes which deserve attention from future researchers. Along the way, structural-stylistic and editorial-linguistic comments are made on individual compositions.