From the New Kingdom, B.C. 1600-700, we have the *'Maxims of Any,'
spoken to his son Khonsuhetep, numerous hymns to the gods, including
*that of King Akhenaten to the Aten (or disk of the sun), and the
later *hymns to Amen Ra. Inscriptions of every kind, historical,
mythological, and funereal, abound. The historical *inscription of
Piankhy is of very late date. On papyri there are the stories of the
*'Two Brothers,' of the 'Taking of Joppa,' of the *'Doomed Prince.'
From the Saite period (XXVIth Dynasty, B.C. 700) and later, there is
little worthy of record in hieroglyphics: the inscriptions follow
ancient models, and present nothing striking or original. In demotic we
have the *'Story of Setna,' a papyrus of moralities, a chronicle
somewhat falsified, a harper's song, a philosophical dialogue between a
cat and a jackal, and others.
Here we might end. Greek authors in Egypt were many: some were native,
some of foreign birth or extraction, but they all belong to a different
world from the Ancient Egyptian. With the adaptation of the Greek
alphabet to the spelling of the native dialects, Egyptian came again to
the front in Coptic, the language of Christian Egypt. Coptic literature,
if such it may be called, was almost entirely produced in Egyptian
monasteries and intended for edification. Let us hope that it served its
end in its day. To us the dull, extravagant, and fantastic Acts of the
Saints, of which its original works chiefly consist, are tedious and
ridiculous except for the linguist or the church historian. They
certainly display the adjustment of the Ancient Egyptian mind to new
conditions of life and belief; but the introduction of Christianity
forms a fitting boundary to our sketch, and we will now proceed to the
texts themselves.
[Signatures: Francis Llewellyn Griffith
Kate Bradbury Griffith]