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THE
LITERATURE
OF THE
ANCIENT EGYPTIANS
BY
E.A. WALLIS BUDGE, M.A., LITT.D.
_Sometime Scholar of Christ's College, Cambridge, and Tyrwhitt_
_Hebrew Scholar; Keeper of the Department of Egyptian_
_and Assyrian Antiquities in the British Museum_
1914
LONDON
J.M. DENT & SONS LIMITED
Aldine House, Bedford Street, W.C.
[Frontispiece:
The Elysian Fields of the Egyptians according to the Papyrus of Ani.
1. Ani adoring the gods of Sekhet-Aaru.
2. Ani reaping in the Other World.
3. Ani ploughing in the Other World.
4. The abode of the perfect spirits, and the magical boats.]
PREFACE
This little book is intended to serve as an elementary introduction to
the study of Egyptian Literature. Its object is to present a short
series of specimens of Egyptian compositions, which represent all the
great periods of literary activity in Egypt under the Pharaohs, to all
who are interested in the study of the mental development of ancient
nations. It is not addressed to the Egyptological specialist, to whom,
as a matter of course, its contents are well known, and therefore its
pages are not loaded with elaborate notes and copious references. It
represents, I believe, the first attempt made to place before the public
a summary of the principal contents of Egyptian Literature in a handy
and popular form.
The specimens of native Egyptian Literature printed herein are taken
from tombs, papyri, stelæ, and other monuments, and, with few
exceptions, each specimen is complete in itself. Translations of most of
the texts have appeared in learned works written by Egyptologists in
English, French, German, and Italian, but some appear in English for the
first time. In every case I have collated my own translations with the
texts, and, thanks to the accurate editions of texts which have appeared
in recent years, it has been found possible to make many hitherto
difficult passages clear. The translations are as literal as the
difference between the Egyptian and English idioms will permit, but it
has been necessary to insert particles and often to invert the order of
the words in the original works in order to produce a connected meaning
in English. The result of this has been in many cases to break up the
short abrupt sentences in which the Egyptian author delighted, and
which he used frequently with dramatic effect. Extraordinarily concise
phrases have been paraphrased, but the meanings given to several unknown
words often represent guess-work.
In selecting the texts for translation in this book an attempt has been
made to include compositions that are not only the best of their kind,
but that also illustrate the most important branches of Egyptian
Literature. Among these religious, mythological, and moral works bulk
largely, and in many respects these represent the peculiar bias of the
mind of the ancient Egyptian better than compositions of a purely
historical character. No man was more alive to his own material
interests, but no man has ever valued the things of this world less in
comparison with the salvation of his soul and the preservation of his
physical body. The immediate result of this was a perpetual demand on
his part for information concerning the Other World, and for guidance
during his life in this world. The priests attempted to satisfy his
craving for information by composing the Books of the Dead and the other
funerary works with which we are acquainted, and the popularity of these
works seems to show that they succeeded. From the earliest times the
Egyptians regarded a life of moral excellence upon earth as a necessary
introduction to the life which he hoped to live with the blessed in
heaven. And even in pyramid times he conceived the idea of the existence
of a God Who judged rightly, and Who set "right in the place of wrong."
This fact accounts for the reverence in which he held the Precepts of
Ptah-hetep, Kaqemna, Herutataf, Amenemhāt I, Ani, Tuauf, Amen-hetep, and
other sages. To him, as to all Africans, the Other World was a very real
thing, and death and the Last Judgment were common subjects of his daily
thoughts. The great antiquity of this characteristic of the Egyptian is
proved by a passage in a Book of Precepts, which was written by a king
of the ninth or tenth dynasty for his son, who reigned under the name of
Merikarā. The royal writer in it reminds his son that the Chiefs [of
Osiris] who judge sinners perform their duty with merciless justice on
the Day of Judgment. It is useless to assume that length of years will
be accepted by them as a plea of justification. With them the lifetime
of a man is only regarded as a moment. After death these Chiefs must be
faced, and the only things that they will consider will be his works.
Life in the Other World is for ever, and only the reckless fool forgets
this fact. The man who has led a life free from lies and deceit shall
live after death like a god.
The reader who wishes to continue his studies of Egyptian Literature
will find abundant material in the list of works given on pp. 256-8.
E.A. WALLIS BUDGE.
BRITISH MUSEUM,
_April_ 17, 1914.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. THOTH, THE AUTHOR OF EGYPTIAN LITERATURE. WRITING MATERIALS,
PAPYRUS, INK AND INK-POT, PALETTE, &c. 1
II. THE PYRAMID TEXTS: 9
The Book of Opening the Mouth 13
The Liturgy of Funerary Offerings 16
Hymns to the Sky-goddess and Sun-god 18
The King in Heaven 20
The Hunting and Slaughter of the Gods by the King 21
III. STORIES OF MAGICIANS WHO LIVED UNDER THE ANCIENT EMPIRE: 25
Ubaaner and the Wax Crocodile 25
The Magician Tchatchamānkh and the Gold Ornament 27
Teta, who restored Life to Dead Animals, &c. 29
Rut-tetet and the Three Sons of Rā 33
IV. THE BOOK OF THE DEAD: 37
Summary of Chapters 42
Hymns, Litany, and Extracts from the Book of the Dead 44
The Great Judgment 51
V. BOOKS OF THE DEAD OF THE GRÆCO-ROMAN PERIOD: 59
Book of Breathings 59
Book of Traversing Eternity 61
The Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys 62
The Festival Songs of Isis and Nephthys 64
The Book of Making Splendid the Spirit of Osiris 64
VI. THE EGYPTIAN STORY OF THE CREATION 67
VII. LEGENDS OF THE GODS: 71
The Destruction of Mankind 71
The Legend of Rā and Isis 74
The Legend of Horus of Behutet 77
The Legend of Khnemu and the Seven Years' Famine 83
The Legend of the Wanderings of Isis 87
The Legend of the Princess of Bekhten 92
VIII. HISTORICAL LITERATURE: 98
Extract from the Palermo Stone 100
Edict against the Blacks 101
Inscription of Usertsen III at Semnah 101
Campaign of Thothmes II in the Sūdān 102
Capture of Megiddo by Thothmes III 103
The Conquests of Thothmes III summarised by Amen-Rā 106
Summary of the Reign of Rameses III 110
The Invasion and Conquest of Egypt by Piānkhi 116
IX. AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL LITERATURE: 126
The Autobiography of Una 127
The Autobiography of Herkhuf 131
The Autobiography of Ameni Amenemhāt 135
The Autobiography of Thetha 137
The Autobiography of Amasis, the Naval Officer 140
The Autobiography of Amasis, surnamed Pen-Nekheb 143
The Autobiography of Tehuti, the Erpā 145
The Autobiography of Thaiemhetep 149
X. TALES OF TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE: 155
The Story of Sanehat 155
The Story of the Educated Peasant Khuenanpu 169
The Journey of the Priest Unu-Amen into Syria 185
XI. FAIRY TALES: 196
The Tale of the Two Brothers 196
The Story of the Shipwrecked Traveller 207
XII. EGYPTIAN HYMNS TO THE GODS: 214
Hymn to Amen-Rā 214
Hymn to Amen 219
Hymn to the Sun-god 220
Hymn to Osiris 221
Hymn to Shu 222
XIII. MORAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL LITERATURE: 224
The Precepts of Ptah-hetep 225
The Maxims of Ani 228
The Talk of a Man who was tired of Life with His Soul 231
The Lament of Khakhepersenb, surnamed Ankhu 235
The Lament of Apuur 236
XIV. EGYPTIAN POETICAL COMPOSITIONS: 241
The Poem in the Tomb of Antuf 242
XV. MISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE: 244
The Book of Two Ways 244
The Book "Am Tuat" 244
The Book of Gates 246
The Ritual of Embalmment 247
The Ritual of the Divine Cult 248
The Book "May My Name Flourish" 250
The Book of Āapep 250
The Instructions of Tuauf 250
Medical Papyri 252
Magical Papyri 252
Legal Documents 253
Historical Romances 254
Mathematical Papyri 254
EDITIONS OF EGYPTIAN TEXTS, TRANSLATIONS, &c. 256
INDEX 259
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
THE ELYSIAN FIELDS OF THE EGYPTIANS _Frontispiece_
THOTH, THE SCRIBE OF THE GODS 3
THOTH AND AMEN-RĀ SUCCOURING ISIS 5
EGYPTIAN WRITING PALETTES _To face_ 6
VIGNETTE FROM THE BOOK OF THE DEAD (Chapter XCII) _To face_ 42
HER-HERU AND QUEEN NETCHEMET RECITING A HYMN _To face_ 44
HER-HERU AND QUEEN NETCHEMET STANDING IN THE
HALL OF OSIRIS _To face_ 52
STELE RELATING THE STORY OF THE HEALING OF BENTRESHT 94
STELE ON WHICH IS CUT THE SPEECH OF AMEN-RĀ 107
A PAGE FROM THE GREAT HARRIS PAPYRUS _To face_ 110
STELE ON WHICH IS CUT THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THAIEMHETEP 150
A PAGE OF THE TALE OF THE TWO BROTHERS _To face_ 196
THE LITERATURE OF THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS
CHAPTER I
THOTH, THE AUTHOR OF EGYPTIAN LITERATURE.
WRITING MATERIALS, ETC.
The Literature of ancient Egypt is the product of a period of about four
thousand years, and it was written in three kinds of writing, which are
called hieroglyphic, hieratic, and demotic. In the first of these the
characters were pictures of objects, in the second the forms of the
characters were made as simple as possible so that they might be written
quickly, and in the third many of them lost their picture form
altogether and became mere symbols. Egyptian writing was believed to
have been invented by the god Tehuti, or Thoth, and as this god was
thought to be a form of the mind and intellect and wisdom of the God who
created the heavens and the earth, the picture characters, or
hieroglyphs as they are called, were held to be holy, or divine, or
sacred. Certain religious texts were thought to possess special virtue
when written in hieroglyphs, and the chapters and sections of books that
were considered to have been composed by Thoth himself were believed to
possess very great power, and to be of the utmost benefit to the dead
when they were written out for them in hieroglyphs, and buried with them
in their coffins. Thoth also invented the science of numbers, and as he
fixed the courses of the sun, moon, and stars, and ordered the seasons,
he was thought to be the first astronomer. He was the lord of wisdom,
and the possessor of all knowledge, both heavenly and earthly, divine
and human; and he was the author of every attempt made by man to draw,
paint, and carve. As the lord and maker of books, and as the skilled
scribe, he was the clerk of the gods, and kept the registers wherein the
deeds of men were written down. The deep knowledge of Thoth enabled him
to find out the truth at all times, and this ability caused the
Egyptians to assign to him the position of Chief Judge of the dead. A
very ancient legend states that Thoth acted in this capacity in the
great trial that took place in heaven when Osiris was accused of certain
crimes by his twin-brother Set, the god of evil. Thoth examined the
evidence, and proved to the gods that the charges made by Set were
untrue, and that Osiris had spoken the truth and that Set was a liar.
For this reason every Egyptian prayed that Thoth might act for him as he
did for Osiris, and that on the day of the Great Judgment Thoth might
preside over the weighing of his heart in the Balance. All the important
religious works in all periods were believed to have been composed
either by himself, or by holy scribes who were inspired by him. They
were believed to be sources of the deepest wisdom, the like of which
existed in no other books in the world. And it is probably to these
books that Egypt owed her fame for learning and wisdom, which spread
throughout all the civilised world. The "Books of Thoth," which late
popular tradition in Egypt declared to be as many as 36,525 in number,
were revered by both natives and foreigners in a way which it is
difficult for us in these days to realise. The scribes who studied and
copied these books were also specially honoured, for it was believed
that the spirit of Thoth, the twice-great and thrice-great god, dwelt in
them. The profession of the scribe was considered to be most honourable,
and its rewards were great, for no rank and no dignity were too high for
the educated scribe. Thoth appears in the papyri and on the monuments as
an ibis-headed man, and his companion is usually a dog-headed ape called
"Asten." In the Hall of the Great Judgment he is seen holding in one
hand a reed with which he is writing on a palette the result of the
weighing of the heart of the dead man in the Balance. The gods accepted
the report of Thoth without question, and rewarded the good soul and
punished the bad according to his statement. From the beginning to the
end of the history of Egypt the position of Thoth as the "righteous
judge," and framer of the laws by which heaven and earth, and men and
gods were governed, remained unchanged.
[Illustration: Thoth, the Scribe of the Gods.]
The substances used by the Egyptians for writing upon were very
numerous, but the commonest were stone of various kinds, wood, skin, and
papyrus. The earliest writings were probably traced upon these
substances with some fluid, coloured black or red, which served as ink.
When the Egyptians became acquainted with the use of the metals they
began to cut their writings in stone. The text of one of the oldest
chapters of the Book of the Dead (LXIV) is said in the Rubric to the
chapter to have been "found" cut upon a block of "alabaster of the
south" during the reign of Menkaurā, a king of the fourth dynasty, about
3700 B.C. As time went on and men wanted to write long texts or
inscriptions, they made great use of wood as a writing material, partly
on account of the labour and expense of cutting in stone. In the British
Museum many wooden coffins may be seen with their insides covered with
religious texts, which were written with ink as on paper. Sheepskin, or
goatskin, was used as a writing material, but its use was never general;
ancient Egyptian documents written on skin or, as we should say, on
parchment, are very few. At a very early period the Egyptians learned
how to make a sort of paper, which is now universally known by the name
of "papyrus." When they made this discovery cannot be said, but the
hieroglyphic inscriptions of the early dynasties contain the picture of
a roll of papyrus, and the antiquity of the use of papyrus must
therefore be very great. Among the oldest dated examples of inscribed
papyrus may be noted some accounts which were written in the reign of
King Assa (fourth dynasty, 3400 B.C.), and which were found at Sakkārah,
about 20 miles to the south of Cairo.
Papyrus was made from the papyrus plant that grew and flourished in the
swamps and marshes of Lower Egypt, and in the shallow pools that were
formed by the annual Nile flood. It no longer grows in Egypt, but it is
found in the swamps of the Egyptian Sūdān, where it grows sometimes to
a height of 25 feet. The roots and the stem, which is often thicker than
a man's arm, are used as fuel, and the head, which is large and rounded,
is in some districts boiled and eaten as a vegetable. The Egyptian
variety of the papyrus plant was smaller than that found in the Sūdān,
and the Egyptians made their paper from it by cutting the inner part of
the stem into thin strips, the width of which depended upon the
thickness of the stem; the length of these varied, of course, with the
length of the stem. To make a sheet of papyrus several of these strips
were laid side by side lengthwise, and several others were laid over
them crosswise. Thus each sheet of papyrus contained two layers, which
were joined together by means of glue and water or gum. Pliny, a Roman
writer, states (Bohn's edition, vol. iii. p. 189) that Nile water,
which, when in a muddy state, has the peculiar qualities of glue, was
used in fastening the two layers of strips together, but traces of gum
have actually been found on papyri. The sheets were next pressed and
then dried in the sun, and when rubbed with a hard polisher in order to
remove roughnesses, were ready for use.[1] By adding sheet to sheet,
rolls of papyrus of almost any length could be made. The longest roll in
the British Museum is 133 feet long by 16-1/2 inches high (Harris
Papyrus, No. 1), and the second in length is a copy of the Book of the
Dead, which is 123 feet long and 18-1/2 inches high; the latter contains
2666 lines of writing arranged in 172 columns. The rolls on which
ordinary compositions were written were much shorter and not so high,
for they are rarely more than 20 feet long, and are only from 8 to 10
inches in height.
[Illustration: Thoth and Amen-Rā Succouring Isis in the Papyrus Swamps.]
The scribe mixed on his palette the paints which he used. This palette
usually consisted of a piece of alabaster, wood, ivory, or slate, from 8
to 16 inches in length and from 2 to 3-1/2 inches in width; all four
corners were square. At one end of the palette a number of oval or
circular hollows were sunk to hold ink or paint. Down the middle was cut
a groove, square at one end and sloping at the other, in which the
writing reeds were placed. These were kept in position by a piece of
wood glued across the middle of the palette, or by a sliding cover,
which also served to protect the reeds from injury. On the sides of this
groove are often found inscriptions that give the name of the owner of
the palette, and that contain prayers to the gods for funerary
offerings, or invocations to Thoth, the inventor of the art of writing.
The black ink used by the scribes was made of lamp-black or of
finely-powdered charcoal mixed with water, to which a very small
quantity of gum was probably added. Red and yellow paint were made from
mineral earths or ochres, blue paint was made from lapis-lazuli powder,
green paint from sulphate of copper, and white paint from lime-white.
Sometimes the ink was placed in small wide-mouthed pots made of Egyptian
porcelain or alabaster. The scribe rubbed down his colours on a stone
slab with a small stone muller. The writing reed, which served as a pen,
was from 8 to 10 inches long, and from one-sixteenth to one-eighth of an
inch in diameter; the end used in writing was bruised and not cut. In
late times a very much thicker reed was used, and then the end was cut
like a quill or steel pen. Writing reeds of this kind were carried in
boxes of wood and metal specially made for the purpose. Many specimens
of all kinds of Egyptian writing materials are to be seen in the
Egyptian Rooms of the British Museum.
[Footnote 1: In some parts of Mesopotamia where scribes at the present
day use rough paper made in Russia, each sheet before being written upon
is laid upon a board and polished by means of a glass bottle.]
[Illustration: Wooden Palette of Rāmeri, an official of Thothmes IV.
1470 B.C. Wooden Palette of Aāhmes I, King of Egypt 1600 B.C.]
As papyrus was expensive the pupils in the schools attached to the great
temples of Egypt wrote their exercises and copies of standard literary
compositions on slices of white limestone of fine texture, or upon
boards, in the shape of modern slates used in schools, whitened with
lime. The "copies" from which they worked were written by the teacher on
limestone slabs of somewhat larger size. Copies of the texts that masons
cut upon the walls of temples and other monuments were also written on
slabs of this kind, and when figures of kings or gods were to be
sculptured on the walls their proportions were indicated by
perpendicular and horizontal lines drawn to scale. Portions of broken
earthen-ware pots were also used for practising writing upon, and in the
Ptolemaic and Roman Periods lists of goods, and business letters, and
the receipts given by the tax-gatherers, were written upon potsherds. In
still later times, when skin or parchment was as expensive as papyrus,
the Copts, or Egyptian Christians, used slices of limestone and
potsherds for drafts of portions of the Scriptures and letters in much
the same way as did their ancestors.
A roll of papyrus when not in use was kept in shape by a string or piece
of papyrus cord, which was tied in a bow; sometimes, especially in the
case of legal documents, a clay seal bearing the owner's name was
stamped on the cord. Valuable rolls were kept in wooden cases or "book
boxes," which were deposited in a chamber or "house" set apart for the
purpose, which was commonly called the "house of books," _i.e._ the
library. Having now described the principal writing materials used by
the ancient Egyptians, we may pass on to consider briefly the various
classes of Egyptian Literature that have come down to us.