Through the Eras

LiteratureHYMN TO THE SUN GOD (continued)His deed recoils upon himAs Horus, son of Isis,Who for him rescued his father:Hallowed be, and exalted, his name!Majesty, it has taken its throne,Egypt’s splendor is sure under law;The highroad is safe, bypaths lie beckoning—How ordered the banks of the River!Wrongdoing, it weakens,Injustice shall all pass away!Earth lives in peace under its Lord,Ma’at, Lady Truth, stands firm for hermaster,Man turns his back upon evil.XIHale be your heart, Osiris,You who were truly good,For the son of Isis has taken thecrown!Adjudged to him is his father’s kingdomDown in the broad hall of Geb.Rê it was uttered this; Thoth wrote it down:And the Grand Tribunal concurred.Osiris, your father decreed in your favor!All he said has been faithfully done.SOURCE: “Hymn to Osiris,” in Ancient Egyptian Literature. Trans.John L. Foster (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001):103–109.POLITICAL FICTION. At least two stories writtenin the Nineteenth Dynasty are set in the reign of theEighteenth-dynasty king Thutmose III (1479–1425B.C.E.), at least 200 years before the time of composition.The Taking of Joppa and The Story of a Military Expeditionof Thutmosis III into Syria both assume this period wasa golden age of Egyptian military prowess. In The Takingof Joppa, Egyptian soldiers sneak over the town walls usingbaskets, a theme anticipating the Greek story of theTrojan Horse and tales of Ali Baba and the forty thieves.Such stories suggest the Nineteenth-dynasty policy that restoredvalues associated with Egypt’s rulers before the timeof Akhenaten and the Amarna period. Military valueswhich had received less attention during the Amarna periodonce again rank high in authors’ estimation.OTHER NARRATIVES. Other narratives in LateEgyptian occur outside of time, when the gods stillwalked the earth. The Contendings of Horus and Seth recountsa series of struggles between these gods as theycompete to follow Osiris as rightful king of the living.Horus, Osiris’ son, faces many difficulties in his fightagainst his uncle Seth, brother of Osiris. Horus eventuallytriumphs with the aid of his mother Isis, the goddessof magic. The Doomed Prince also contains elementsassociated with the myth of Osiris and does not occurin a recognizable historical period. It also considers questionsof the nature of fate. Because the papyrus lacks anending, it is not clear whether or not the prince is ableto escape the doom mentioned in the story’s modern title.The Story of Two Brothers contains an episodestrongly reminiscent of the biblical story of Potiphar’swife found in Genesis of the Bible. In both stories, ahandsome young man suffers for refusing to betray hismaster with the master’s wife. The wife turns on theyoung man, accusing him of rape. This episode serves asthe mechanism for subsequent adventures in the story.All of these stories exist in unique manuscripts on papyrus.This circumstance raises questions of how widelyknown such literature was among Egyptians. Somescholars have suggested that this literature also circulatedorally and that it is the manuscripts that are exceptional.LOVE POETRY. About fifty love poems composedduring the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties representa unique aspect of New Kingdom literature. Thoughan Eighteenth-dynasty poem about the author’s love ofthe city of Thebes might represent a precedent for thesepoems, they otherwise seem the sole examples of personallyric. They are unusual in the ancient world becausethey are completely secular. While Twelfth- andEighteenth-dynasty authors had composed verse hymnsand prayers or praise of the king, these love songs concernthe affairs of ordinary men and women. The songsare usually twenty to thirty lines long. The translatorJohn L. Foster has described the broad range of emotionthey summon, including tenderness, romance, and joy.They hint at both elevated, pure love and at physical passion.They also capture familiar situations: the youngwoman surprised at meeting her lover unexpectedly, ora young couple sitting together in the garden. They includea young lover cataloging his girlfriend’s charms anda young woman trying to sleep but distracted bythoughts of her boyfriend. Both male and female voicesspeak in the poems, but it is not clear that there were136 Arts and Humanities Through the Eras: Ancient Egypt (2675 B.C.E.–332 B.C.E.)