Through the Eras

LiteratureDynasty (1539–1292 B.C.E.). Should scholars concludethat narratives were unimportant in the Eighteenth Dynastyor that by the accidents of discovery, the texts writtenthen have not survived or not yet been discovered?Such problems have no immediate solution.TYPES OF LITERATURE. Subject matter is one key tounderstanding the types of ancient Egyptian literature. Autobiographyis the oldest subject, beginning in the OldKingdom. Autobiographies are recorded in tombs and includeprayers for offerings along with events from the deceasedtomb-owner’s life. In general, they include manystereotyped statements that demonstrate that the authorhad lived his life according to Egyptian principles of justice.Advice was the next most popular subject for Egyptianauthors. Modern scholars have called these texts“wisdom,” though they mostly deal with practical tips oncareers and interacting with superiors. Wisdom could alsoinclude information about the nature of the moral life. Anothersubject was the gap between moral values and reality.This literature, called pessimistic, emerged at the endof the First Intermediate Period (2130–2008 B.C.E.), aftera time of political chaos. The pessimistic literature representsthe values of the ruling class and laments their lossof power during the period of political decentralization.Morality, indeed, is associated with the restoration of anEgyptian central government. Narratives emerged in bothpoetry and prose in the Middle Kingdom and were evenmore popular in the Nineteenth Dynasty and in the LatePeriod. Middle Kingdom narratives include the epic poemthat deals with the adventures of a man named Sinuhe andthe experience of a shipwrecked sailor, narrated in prose.New Kingdom and Late Period narratives seem more concernedwith the gods’ activities, though authors composedthem in the contemporary speech of the people rather thanthe classical language. Modern knowledge of ancient lovepoetry is confined to the Nineteenth Dynasty, though thistoo seems an accident of discovery. The love poems are especiallyappealing because their interests and concerns seemso contemporary: a young girl yearns for a glimpse of herboyfriend while he spends time with his friends, or a boyplots to surprise his girlfriend while she lingers at the river.TOPICSin LiteratureEGYPTIAN WRITING AND LANGUAGEBIRTH AND LOSS. The earliest evidence for writingthe Egyptian language in hieroglyphs dates to about 3300B.C.E. During the 1990s, the archaeologist Gunter Dreyerdiscovered the earliest known inscriptions, a group of sealsbearing the names of early Egyptian kings who reignedfrom 3300 B.C.E. to about 3100 B.C.E., in the town ofAbydos, located in central Egypt. Dreyer’s discoveriesnewly suggest that Egyptian was the first written languagein the eastern Mediterranean, pre-dating Sumerian, thenext oldest written language, whose writing system wasinvented in what is now modern Iraq about 3000 B.C.E.Hieroglyphs and more cursive forms of Egyptian writingcalled hieratic and demotic continued in use in Egypt fornearly 3,500 years. The Pyramid Texts, the funeral liturgyfound in royal pyramids in the late Fifth and early SixthDynasties, and the autobiographies found in tombs of thesame period (2500–2170 B.C.E.) constitute the firstknown Egyptian literature. In contrast to the vague dateand unknown scribes of the first inscriptions, the lastknown Egyptian inscription written in hieroglyphs includesa date equivalent to 24 August 394 C.E. and thename of the scribe, Nesmeterakhem, son of Nesmeter,who composed it and carved it on a wall at the Templeof Isis in Philae on Egypt’s southern border. By this time,Macedonian Greeks ruled Egypt following Alexander theGreat’s conquest of the country in 332 B.C.E. Greek hadbecome the official language of the Egyptian governmentwith Alexander’s conquest, though ordinary Egyptianscontinued to speak and write their own language. Yet theruling class, even among Egyptians, began to speak andwrite Greek because this language was now the key topower and success. Approximately 100 years after the lasthieroglyphic inscription at Philae, an Egyptian namedHorapollo who lived in Alexandria wrote a book in Greekcalled The Hieroglyphics of the Egyptian, completely mischaracterizingthe hieroglyphic writing system. Horapolloprobably based his description of hieroglyphs on lists hefound in the Library of Alexandria. He had access to someaccurate facts about the meaning of particular hieroglyphicsigns, but he did not know that most of the hieroglyphicsigns had phonetic values and that thehieroglyphs were a means of writing ordinary language.He wrote instead that hieroglyphs were pictures thatcould convey philosophical ideas to readers who were initiatedin their mysteries. Horapollo’s ideas derived fromneo-Platonism, a Greek philosophical school current duringhis lifetime that stressed the role of contemplation inachieving knowledge. Horapollo believed that hieroglyphswere an object of contemplation and thus a sourceand expression of knowledge. Horapollo’s book led earlyEuropean scholars astray for the 403 years between hisbook’s modern publication in Italy in 1419 and Frenchscholar J.-F. Champollion’s decipherment of hieroglyphsin 1822.Arts and Humanities Through the Eras: Ancient Egypt (2675 B.C.E.–332 B.C.E.) 115