"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 naïveté 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]—
I. The Ancient Kingdom, about B.C. 4500-3000
The earliest historic period—from the Ist Dynasty to the IIId, about B.C. 4500—has left no inscriptions of any extent. Some portions of the 'Book of the Dead' profess to date from these or earlier times, and probably much of the religious literature is of extremely ancient origin. The first book of *'Proverbs' in the Prisse Papyrus is attributed by its writer to the end of the IIId Dynasty (about 4000 B.C.). From the IVth Dynasty to the end of the VIth, the number of the inscriptions increases; tablets set up to the kings of the IVth Dynasty in memory of warlike raids are found in the peninsula of Sinai, and funerary inscriptions abound. The pyramids raised at the end of the Vth and during the VIth Dynasty are found to contain interminable religious inscriptions, forming almost complete rituals for the deceased kings. Professor Maspero, who has published these texts, states that they "contain much verbiage, many pious platitudes, many obscure allusions to the affairs of the other world, and amongst all this rubbish some passages full of movement and wild energy, in which poetical inspiration and religious emotion are still discernible through the veil of mythological expressions." Of the funerary and biographical inscriptions the most remarkable is that of *Una. Another, slightly later but hardly less important, is on the façade of the tomb of Herkhuf, at Aswân, and recounts the expeditions into Ethiopia and the southern oases which this resourceful man carried through successfully. In Herkhuf's later life he delighted a boy King of Egypt by bringing back for him from one of his raids a grotesque dwarf dancer of exceptional skill: the young Pharaoh sent him a long letter on the subject, which was copied in full on the tomb as an addition to the other records there. It is to the Vth Dynasty also that the second collection of *'Proverbs' in the Prisse Papyrus is dated. The VIIth and VIIIth Dynasties have left us practically no records of any kind.