Through the Eras

LiteratureHyksos from Egypt. This was the first stage of drivingthese foreign rulers out of the country. Scribes workingfor Hatshepsut (1478–1458 B.C.E.) produced narrativeinscriptions that described her birth and also the expeditionto the land of Punt (modern Ethiopia) that shecommissioned. They are found along with sculptural reliefat her temple in Deir el Bahri. The Annals of ThutmoseIII, carved on the walls of the Karnak Temple,present a narrative of battles, tactics, and booty thatseems to be a new kind of writing. Some scholars suggestthat there was a Middle Kingdom tradition for suchtexts, though the evidence is meager. There is a fragmentaryTwelfth-dynasty inscription from Memphispublished in the reign of Amenemhet II (1876–1842B.C.E.) that might represent the precedent for ThutmoseIII’s inscription. There is also an Eighteenth-dynastymanuscript called The Berlin Leather Roll (because it iswritten on leather and preserved in the Egyptian Museumin Berlin) that might be a New Kingdom copy ofan historical inscription written in the Twelfth Dynastyduring the reign of Senwosret I (1919–1875 B.C.E.).Some scholars, however, have argued that this text wasan Eighteenth-dynasty forgery, designed to serve as aprecedent for similar New Kingdom texts. This argumentassumes that scribes were not free to invent newforms in the Eighteenth Dynasty and had to create aprecedent from the age of the classics in order to writenew kinds of works.AUTOBIOGRAPHIES. Eighteenth-dynasty autobiographieshave not been closely studied, but they seemto be less central to the literature of the Eighteenth Dynastythan they were in the Old and Middle Kingdoms.Nobles published these autobiographies in their tombs,as was done in the Old Kingdom, and on statues, whichwas an innovation. There are no autobiographies on stelae,a practice typical in the Middle Kingdom. The personalsubject matter in these autobiographies oftenconcentrates on military exploits or on religious subjects.Later in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Dynasties theautobiographies are entirely religious rather than narrativesof personal experience. For some unknown reason,officials no longer considered these personal experiencesto be important.HYMNS. Hymns were also a new creation in the NewKingdom. They were published mostly in tombs of noblesand bureaucrats, two of the social classes that couldafford elaborate Egyptian burials. Most of the hymns areunique copies, suggesting that perhaps the tomb ownercomposed them for his own use. Hymns seem to be theliterary form used to develop religious debates in writing.The Great Hymn to Osiris, for example, recorded onthe Stela of Amenmose, gives the most complete accountin Egyptian of the myth of Osiris. It helps establish thecities where the god had temples, describes Osiris’ relationshipwith other gods, and associates the deceasedking with the god. The Hymns to the Sun God, recordedon the stela of Suti and Hor, argues through its multiplestanzas the primacy of the sun as a god. It lists thesun’s multiple names such as Amun, Harakhti, Re,Khepri, and Aten. It makes the argument that all of thesegods are the equivalent of Amun. It was only during theAmarna Period of the Eighteenth Dynasty (1352–1332B.C.E.), a period of tremendous religious upheaval, thathymns utilized the language of common everydayspeech, a dialect called Late Egyptian. Late Egyptian representedthe spoken language as it had evolved duringthe hundreds of years since the end of the Middle Kingdom.The classical texts of the Twelfth Dynasty werewritten in Middle Egyptian, the spoken language of thatperiod. Now once again scribes were using everydayspeech to create new works of literature. Some scholarssuggest that Akhenaten understood the use of the colloquiallanguage as a way to conform with maat or rightconduct. The Egyptians themselves provide no explanationfor this change.TWO LANGUAGES. Whether or not Eighteenthdynastyscribes created new literature, they were familiarwith both the classical language of Middle Egyptianand the spoken language called Late Egyptian. In thehistorical work The Annals of Thutmose III, the authorwrote in Middle Egyptian, though there are clues in certainword choices and grammatical forms that he was aLate Egyptian speaker. By the Nineteenth Dynasty, atleast one scribe living in Deir el-Medina in Upper Egyptowned a library that contained texts in both Middleand Late Egyptian. Numerous examples of Nineteenthdynastystudent copies of classics such as Sinuhe demonstratethat students used copying as one way to learn theolder language. From the Nineteenth to the TwentiethDynasty, highly literate scribes must have known howto read the classical and the modern language.INNOVATION. The preserved record of New Kingdomliterature certainly creates the impression that theearly Nineteenth Dynasty witnessed a sudden literaryrevolution. New forms including love poetry, narrativefiction, and occasional pieces appear, written in LateEgyptian. Scribes also wrote works following older formssuch as teachings, but composed in everyday speechrather than the classical Middle Egyptian dialect. Still,it remains difficult to know whether there really was arevolution or if such texts existed in the Eighteenth Dynastybut did not survive into modern times.Arts and Humanities Through the Eras: Ancient Egypt (2675 B.C.E.–332 B.C.E.) 133