Through the Eras

LiteratureLimestone statue of a scribe, seated with a papyrus scroll. THEART ARCHIVE/DAGLI ORTI. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.Stela of Senres and Hormose. BROOKLYN MUSEUM OF ART, 07.420,MUSEUM COLLECTION FUND. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.ples of the gods. Tomb and temple walls and stelae preservethe most extensive inscriptions written with hieroglyphs.Scarabs—small images of beetles carved fromstone or molded in faience with a smooth underside thatcould serve as a writing surface—also preserve kings’names and, rarely, preserve extended historical texts.The faience scarabs were created in molds and constituteone means of publishing multiple copies other thanwriting copies by hand.MULTIPLE COPIES. Some Egyptian works of literaturestill exist in multiple copies. Other works exist inonly one sometimes heavily damaged copy. Scholars whohope to establish the popularity or importance of a particularwork in ancient times are frustrated by the accidentsof discovery and preservation that result inknowing dozens of partial copies of the The Story of Sinuhebut only one copy of The Shipwrecked Sailor, twoworks of Middle Egyptian literature. Multiple copiesboth complicate and facilitate the establishment of thetrue text of a particular work. There are almost alwayssmall variations in spelling and even word choice in differentcopies of the same work. With Sinuhe, many ofthese variations stem from the time period when the textwas written. Sinuhe was a classic, composed and copiedby scribes in the Middle Kingdom but still studied inthe New Kingdom and Late Period. Sometimes multiplecopies help modern scholars learn the meaning of thetext. But other times, poorly written and spelled studentcopies frustrate and mislead modern scholars. Multiplecopies can also complicate the determination of a text’sdate of composition.DATE OF COMPOSITION. Scholars must attempt todistinguish between the date of composition and the dateof a copy of a work of literature. The date of compositionrefers to the time when the author created the work.The date of the copy refers to the dates of copies madefor the publication and dissemination of a work of literature,sometimes many years after the date of composition.It is not always easy to determine the date ofArts and Humanities Through the Eras: Ancient Egypt (2675 B.C.E.–332 B.C.E.) 119