The Literature of Ancient Egypt: An Anthology of Stories, Instructions, Stelae, Autobiographies, and Poetry; Third Edition Review
Having read with interest Miriam Lichtheim's Ancient Egyptian Literature - Volume I: The Old and Middle Kingdoms, I debated for some time whether to follow that up with her second Volume (The New Kingdom), or to get this book. My decision came down to whether I should continue with the translations of an author with whom I was familiar, or whether I should opt for what I thought were later translations by a different group of authors. It wasn't until I received the book that I learned that the first edition of this book had been published a little earlier than the translations of Professor Lichtheim, and that, 21 of the 57 texts included in this work, were either included in Volume I of her work, or were included in The Ancient Near East - Volume I - Anthology of Texts & Pictures by James Pritchard which I had read some time before that. So inadvertently I had given myself the opportunity to compare the translations styles of several authors. Considering the difficulties which scholars have in reading these texts and the ambiguities in attempting to translate them, this turned out to be quite a useful choice.
In his introduction, the editor, Professor Simpson, explains that this third edition of the book contains a number of texts not included in the earlier editions, and that the texts were selected on "the basis of literary merit or pretensions thereto" with the contents arranged according to type rather than date. He goes on to explain the characteristics of each genre, the considerable problems in translating Egyptian texts, conventions used in determining specific reading of the texts, the methodology used in the translations, and some details of earlier translations by other scholars. There is an extensive 65 page bibliography at the back of the book which includes a general section, followed by a bibliography for each of the selected texts.
The scholars whose translations are included in the book are Professor Simpson himself , Robert K Ritner, Vincent A. Tobin, and Edward F. Wente, Jr. The translated texts are subdivided into the nine sections:
Part I - Narratives and Tales of Middle Egyptian Literature (4 texts)
Part II - Late Egyptian Stories (9 texts)
Part III - Instructions, Lamentations, and Dialogues (13 texts)
Part IV - From the Religious Literature (6 texts)
Part V - Songs and Royal Hymns (2 texts)
Part VI - Royal Stelae (9 texts)
Part VII - Autobiographies (4 texts)
Part VIII - Scribal Traditions (2 texts)
Part IX - Demotic Literature (8 texts)
Each text is preceded by an introduction by the translator which explains the nature and content of the text, and there are extensive notes which expand on the meaning of certain phrases and explain where there are ambiguities in interpreting the text.
Also in his introduction, Professor Simpson discusses two main approaches to translations - one being to attempt to render an Egyptian sentence so that its characteristics are retained in English, which often makes for a rather artificial translation "a kind of language not represented in everyday speech", - another being an attempt to render the sense which might give a smoother translation which can "result in a paraphrase and leads to interpretative retelling". His team of translators have attempted to a strike a compromise between the two, and in this I think they succeed very well, as the translations are generally easy to read and understand.
My prime motivation in wanting to read the Egyptian texts is gain first hand knowledge of some on the primary sources of information and to compare these with histories of Egypt which often rely heavily on scholarly interpretations of these texts. In other words. I wanted to be able to judge for myself the validity of some of the underlying assumptions which scholars must make when dealing with the political details of imperfectly documented ancient civilizations. For me the most interesting were the texts of the Middle and Late Egyptian Tales; Instructions and Lamentations; Autobiographies; and Demotic texts, even those which I had read in other translations. The texts of various royal stelae included in this book also make fascinating reading, particularly The Victory Stela of Piye, which was completely new to me.
In comparing translations. while I found those of Professor Lichtheim to be a bit more difficult to follow - probably because she prefers to adopt the first approach outlined by Professor Simpson - in general, I found her introductions to be the more informative, with more extensive notes explaining the difficulties in the reading and translation of the texts.
In summary, I am very happy to have bought this book, and I recommend it to others who may be considering purchasing it. I believe that the selected texts are generally representative of the various genre and types of preserved texts, and do provide a useful source (and reference) for the modern accounts of the history of Ancient Egypt The latest edition of this highly praised anthology of ancient Egyptian literature offers fresh translations of all the texts as well as some twenty-five new entries, including writings from the late literature of the Demotic period at the end of classical Egyptian history. The book also includes an extensive bibliography.
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Customer Reviews
A Good Place to Start - Barnaby Thieme - San Francisco, CA
This is an adequate survey of translations of material from ancient Egypt and a useful jumping-off point for interested readers. There is not much in the corpus of Egyptian writing remotely approaching the quality of the Greeks or Babylonians.
The translations are pretty readable though a little awkward. The translators intentionally attempted to preserve something of the grammatical structure of the Egyptian, which strikes me as an odd choice. One does not translate into bad English, and whatever information is conveyed in mimicking Egyptian sentence structures will probably be of interest only to specialists who are unlikely to study this volume.
Some genres gets short shrift (hymns, coffin texts, and funeral texts) and some translations are a bit off (like the willfully eclectic rendering of "Dialog between a Man Weary of Life and his Soul"). More explanatory notes would also be useful.
The Literature of Ancient Egypt - The Northern Light - Europa, Close to Ultima Thule
Well, seeing as this book has been excellently reviewed by others before me, I'll keep this short and sweet. The contents are adequately hinted at in the title and other reviews, so there is little for me to add. The book is easy to read, the at times rather extensive (but necessary) notes are below the main text at each page, so it is easy to follow the meaning as one reads along. The book contains quite a lot of wisdom in itself, and fascinatingly most of it is thousands of years old. The wisdom can be harsh, at times, but as all ancient wisdom, it does make a good point if we really think about it. For example, page 522; "Better a statue of stone than a foolish son. Better to have none than a brother who is a failure".
Sometimes, though, the meanings can be quite obscure and rather amusing, page 516; "Do not laugh at a cat". Well, I'll try to keep this in mind, as I venture through life surrounded by laughable cats?! Oh well, I know cats were highly regarded in Ancient Egypt, but it struck me as quite amusing still. That being said, the book also contains a lot of great literature, both mythic and more profane. Highly recommended for basically everyone, this book is a veritable fountain of wisdom and I'm quite sure you'll have a great time in the company of this magnificent book. 5 stars.
NB; make sure you get the third edition, I bought an earlier edition in good faith, and it turned out the newer edition has several hundred more pages.
Sep 15, 2010 20:01:08
