The advance that has been made in recent years in the decipherment of
the ancient writings of the world enables us to deal in a very
matter-of-fact way with the Egyptian inscriptions. Their chief mysteries
are solved, their philosophy is almost fathomed, their general nature is
understood. The story they have to tell is seldom startling to the
modern mind. The world was younger when they were written. The heart of
man was given to devious ways then, as now and in the days of
Solomon,--that we can affirm full well; but his mind was simpler: apart
from knowledge of men and the conduct of affairs, the educated Egyptian
had no more subtlety than a modern boy of fifteen, or an intelligent
English rustic of a century ago.
To the Egyptologist by profession the inscriptions have a wonderful
charm. The writing itself in its leading form is the most attractive
that has ever been seen. Long rows of clever little pictures of
everything in heaven and earth compose the sentences: every sign is a
plaything, every group a pretty puzzle, and at present, almost every
phrase well understood brings a tiny addition to the sum of the world's
knowledge. But these inscriptions, so rich in facts that concern the
history of mankind and the progress of civilization, seldom possess any
literary charm. If pretentious, as many of them are, they combine bald
exaggeration with worn-out simile, in which ideas that may be poetical
are heaped together in defiance of art. Such are the priestly laudations
of the kings by whose favor the temples prospered. Take, for instance,
the dating of a stela erected under Rameses II. on the route to the
Nubian gold mines. It runs:--
"On the fourth day of the first month of the season of winter,
in the third year of the Majesty of Horus, the Strong Bull,
beloved of the Goddess of Truth, lord of the vulture and of the
urseus diadems, protecting Egypt and restraining the
barbarians, the Golden Horus, rich in years, great in
victories, King of Upper Egypt and King of Lower Egypt, _Mighty
in Truth of Ra_, _Chosen of Ra_,[1] the son of Ra, _Rameses
Beloved of Amen_, granting life for ever and ever, beloved of
Amen Ra lord of the 'Throne of the Two Lands'[2] in Apt Esut,
appearing glorious on the throne of Horus among the living from
day to day even as his father Ra; the good god, lord of the
South Land, Him of Edfu[3] Horus bright of plumage, the
beauteous sparrow-hawk of electrum that hath protected Egypt
with his wing, making a shade for men, fortress of strength and
of victory; he who came forth terrible from the womb to take to
himself his strength, to extend his borders, to whose body
color was given of the strength of Mentu[4]; the god Horus and
the god Set. There was exultation in heaven on the day of his
birth; the gods said, 'We have begotten him;' the goddesses
said, 'He came forth from us to rule the kingdom of Ra;' Amen
spake, 'I am he who hath made him, whereby I have set Truth in
her place; the earth is established, heaven is well pleased,
the gods are satisfied by reason of him.' The Strong Bull
against the vile Ethiopians, which uttereth his roaring against
the land of the negroes while his hoofs trample the
Troglodytes, his horn thrusteth at them; his spirit is mighty
in Nubia and the terror of him reacheth to the land of the
Kary[5]; his name circulateth in all lands because of the
victory which his arms have won; at his name gold cometh forth
from the mountain as at the name of his father, the god Horus
of the land of Baka; beloved is he in the Lands of the South
even as Horus at Meama, the god of the Land of Buhen,[6] King
of Upper and Lower Egypt, _Mighty in Truth of Ra_, son of Ra,
of his body, Lord of Diadems _Rameses Beloved of Amen_, giving
life for ever and ever like his father Ra, day by day."
[Revised from the German translation of Professor Erman.]
As Professor Erman has pointed out, the courtly scribe was most
successful when taking his similes straight from nature, as in the
following description, also of Rameses II.:--
"A victorious lion putting forth its claws while roaring loudly
and uttering its voice in the Valley of the Gazelles.... A
jackal swift of foot seeking what it may find, going round the
circuit of the land in one instant.... his mighty will seizeth
on his enemies like a flame catching the ki-ki plant[7] with
the storm behind it, like the strong flame which hath tasted
the fire, destroying, until everything that is in it becometh
ashes; a storm howling terribly on the sea, its waves like
mountains, none can enter it, every one that is in it is
engulphed in Duat.[8]"
Here and there amongst the hieroglyphic inscriptions are found memorials
of the dead, in which the praises of the deceased are neatly strung
together and balanced like beads in a necklace, and passages occur of
picturesque narrative worthy to rank as literature of the olden time.
We may quote in this connection from the biographical epitaph of the
nomarch Ameny, who was governor of a province in Middle Egypt for
twenty-five years during the long reign of Usertesen I. (about 2700
B.C.). This inscription not only recounts the achievements of Ameny and
the royal favor which was shown him, but also tells us in detail of the
capacity, goodness, charm, discretion, and insight by which he attached
to himself the love and respect of the whole court, and of the people
over whom he ruled and for whose well-being he cared. Ameny says:--
"I was a possessor of favor, abounding in love, a ruler who
loved his city. Moreover I passed years as ruler in the Oryx
nome. All the works of the house of the King came into my hand.
Behold, the superintendent of the gangs[9] of the domains of
the herdsmen of the Oryx nome gave me 3,000 bulls of their
draught stock. I was praised for it in the house of the King
each year of stock-taking. I rendered all their works to the
King's house: there were no arrears to me in any of his
offices.
"The entire Oryx nome served me in numerous attendances.[10]
There was not the daughter of a poor man that I wronged, nor a
widow that I oppressed. There was not a farmer that I
chastised, not a herdsman whom I drove away, not a foreman of
five whose men I took away for the works.[11] There was not a
pauper around me, there was not a hungry man of my time. When
there came years of famine, I arose and ploughed all the fields
of the Oryx nome to its boundary south and north, giving life
to its inhabitants, making its provisions. There was not a
hungry man in it. I gave to the widow as to her that possessed
a husband, and I favored not the elder above the younger in all
that I gave. Thereafter great rises of the Nile took place,
producing wheat and barley, and producing all things
abundantly, but I did not exact the arrears of farming."
Elsewhere in his tomb there are long lists of the virtues of Amenemhat,
and from these the following may be selected both on account of
picturesqueness of expression and the appreciation of fine character
which they display.
"Superintendent of all things which heaven gives and earth
produces, overseer of horns, hoofs, feathers, and shells ...
Master of the art of causing writing to speak ... Caressing of
heart to all people, making to prosper the timid man,
hospitable to all, escorting [travelers] up and down the river
... Knowing how to aid, arriving at time of need; free of
planning evil, without greediness in his body, speaking words
of truth....
Unique as a mighty hunter, the abode of the heart of the
King.... Speaking the right when he judges between suitors,
clear of speaking fraud, knowing how to proceed in the council
of the elders, finding the knot in the skein.... Great of
favors in the house of the King, contenting the heart on the
day of making division, careful of his goings to his equals,
gaining reverence on the day of weighing words, beloved of the
officials of the palace."
The cursive forms of writing--hieratic from the earliest times, demotic
in the latest--were those in which records were committed to papyrus.
This material has preserved to us documents of every kind, from letters
and ledgers to works of religion and philosophy. To these, again,
"literature" is a term rarely to be applied; yet the tales and poetry
occasionally met with on papyri are perhaps the most pleasing of all the
productions of the Egyptian scribe.
It must be confessed that the knowledge of writing in Egypt led to a
kind of primitive pedantry, and a taste for unnatural and to us childish
formality: the free play and naivete of the story-teller is too often
choked, and the art of literary finish was little understood. Simplicity
and truth to nature alone gave lasting charm, for though adornment was
often attempted, their rude arts of literary embellishment were seldom
otherwise than clumsily employed.
A word should be said about the strange condition in which most of the
literary texts have come down to us. It is rarely that monumental
inscriptions contain serious blunders of orthography; the peculiarities
of late archaistic inscriptions which sometimes produce a kind of "dog
Egyptian" can hardly be considered as blunders, for the scribe knew what
meaning he intended to convey. But it is otherwise with copies of
literary works on papyrus. Sometimes these were the productions of
schoolboys copying from dictation as an exercise in the writing-school,
and the blank edges of these papyri are often decorated with essays at
executing the more difficult signs. The master of the school would seem
not to have cared what nonsense was produced by the misunderstanding of
his dictation, so long as the signs were well formed. The composition of
new works on the model of the old, and the accurate understanding of the
ancient works, were taught in a very different school, and few indeed
attained to skill in them. The boys turned out of the writing-school
would read and write a little; the clever ones would keep accounts,
write letters, make out reports as clerks in the government service, and
might ultimately acquire considerable proficiency in this kind of work.
Apparently men of the official class sometimes amused themselves with
puzzling over an ill-written copy of some ancient tale, and with trying
to copy portions of it. The work however was beyond them: they were
attracted by it, they revered the compilations of an elder age and
those which were "written by the finger of Thoth himself"; but the
science of language was unborn, and there was little or no systematic
instruction given in the principles of the ancient grammar and
vocabulary. Those who desired to attain eminence in scholarship after
they had passed through the writing-school had to go to Heliopolis,
Hermopolis, or wherever the principal university of the time might be,
and there sit at the feet of priestly professors; who we fancy were
reverenced as demigods, and who in mysterious fashion and with niggardly
hand imparted scraps of knowledge to their eager pupils. Those endowed
with special talents might after almost lifelong study become proficient
in the ancient language. Would that we might one day discover the hoard
of rolls of such a copyist and writer!
There must have been a large class of hack-copyists practiced in forming
characters both uncial and cursive. Sometimes their copies of religious
works are models of deft writing, the embellishments of artist and
colorist being added to those of the calligrapher: the magnificent rolls
of the 'Book of the Dead' in the British Museum and elsewhere are the
admiration of all beholders. Such manuscripts satisfy the eye, and
apparently neither the multitude in Egypt nor even the priestly royal
undertakers questioned their efficacy in the tomb. Yet are they very
apples of Sodom to the hieroglyphic scholar; fair without, but ashes
within. On comparing different copies of the same text, he sees in
almost every line omissions, perversions, corruptions, until he turns
away baffled and disgusted. Only here and there is the text practically
certain, and even then there are probably grammatical blunders in every
copy. Nor is it only in the later papyri that these blunders are met
with. The hieroglyphic system of writing, especially in its cursive
forms, lends itself very readily to perversion by ignorant and
inattentive copyists; and even monumental inscriptions, so long as they
are mere copies, are usually corrupted. The most ridiculous perversions
of all, date from the Ramesside epoch when the dim past had lost its
charm, for the glories of the XVIIIth Dynasty were still fresh, while
new impulses and foreign influence had broken down adherence to
tradition and isolation.
In the eighth century B.C. the new and the old were definitely parted,
to the advantage of each. On the one hand the transactions of ordinary
life were more easily registered in the cursive demotic script, while on
the other the sacred writings were more thoroughly investigated and
brought into order by the priests. Hence, in spite of absurdities that
had irremediably crept in, the archaistic texts copied in the XXVIth
Dynasty are more intelligible than the same class of work in the XIXth
and XXth Dynasties.
In reading translations from Egyptian, it must be remembered that
uncertainty still remains concerning the meanings of multitudes of words
and phrases. Every year witnesses a great advance in accuracy of
rendering; but the translation even of an easy text still requires here
and there some close and careful guesswork to supply the connecting
links of passages or words that are thoroughly understood, or the
resort to some conventional rendering that has become current for
certain ill-understood but frequently recurring phrases. The renderings
given in the following pages are with one exception specially revised
for this publication, and exclude most of what is doubtful. The
Egyptologist is now to a great extent himself aware whether the ground
on which he is treading is firm or treacherous; and it seems desirable
to make a rule of either giving the public only what can be warranted as
sound translation, or else of warning them where accuracy is doubtful. A
few years ago such a course would have curtailed the area for selection
to a few of the simplest stories and historical inscriptions; but now we
can range over almost the whole field of Egyptian writing, and gather
from any part of it warranted samples to set before the reading public.
The labor, however, involved in producing satisfactory translations
for publication, not mere hasty readings which may give something of the
sense, is very great; and at present few texts have been well rendered.
It is hoped that the following translations will be taken for what they
are intended,--attempts to show a little of the Ancient Egyptian mind in
the writings which it has left to us.
We may now sketch briefly the history of Egyptian literature, dealing
with the subject in periods:[12]--