Barbie I.

Almazan
Egyptian Literature
Ancient Egyptian literature comprises a wide array of narrative and poetic forms including
inscriptions, myths, stories, and legends, religious writings, philosophical works,
autobiographies/biographies, histories, poetry, hymns, personal essays, letters and court records. Although
many of these forms are not usually defined as "literature" they are given that designation in Egyptian
studies because so many of them, especially from the Old kingdom to New Kingdom, are of such high
literary merit, from the autobiographies grew the Pyramid Texts which were accounts of a king's reign and
his successful journey to the afterlife, both these developments took place during the period of the Old
Kingdom.
Most of Egyptian texts were written in hieroglyphics and ideograms. Hieroglyphic writing was
extremely labor intensive and so another script grew up beside it known as hieratic which was faster to
work with and easier to use. Even though hieratic, and later demotic and Coptic, scripts became the common
writing system of the educated and literate, hieroglyphics remained in use throughout Egypt's history for
monumental structures until it was forgotten during the early Christian period.
Although the definition of "Egyptian Literature" includes many different types of writing, for the
present purposes attention will mostly be paid to standard literary works such as stories, legends, myths,
and personal essays, other kinds or work will be mentioned when they are particularly significant. Egyptian
history, and so literature, spans centuries and fills volumes of books, a single article cannot hope to treat of
the subject fairly in attempting to cover the wide range of written works of the culture.

Questions:
1. If you know nothing of early Egyptian Life, how many details of customs and the religion could
you gleam from the poem?
There are many details from the poem about customs of the Egyptians. One is the warmth
and hospitality that they have. Love for their family and their different celebrations with festive
spirits. Aside from these, the poem tells also about their religion. It has a big role in the life of
Egyptians and it is interacted with daily activities of Muslims and Christians living in Egypt.

2. What elements make this a poem rather than a piece of prose?

This is a poem because it is to be read for its message. That this message is hidden in the
poem and it is to be found by treating the words as symbols which naturally do not mean what they
say but stand for something else. The stanzas are written in couplet or grouped together and
 separated by an empty line from other stanzas. It may not have a specific number of lines or rhyme
scheme, but it can still be labeled according to its form or style.

3. Can you think of other traces which ancient Egypt has left upon modern life?
Much of the history of Egypt is divided into three kingdom periods (Old, Middle, and New)
with shorter intermediate periods separating the kingdoms. This refers to the fact that during these
times Egypt was not a unified political power, and thus was in between powerful kingdoms. Even
before the Old Kingdom period, the foundations of Egyptian civilization were being laid for
thousands of years, as people living near the Nile increasingly focused on sedentary agriculture,
which led to urbanization and specialized, non-agricultural economic activity.