Voices from Ancient Egypt

The written word is ubiquitous across ancient Egyptian monuments and on many papyri. This well-preserved corpus of ancient literature gives first-hand insight into Egyptian thought and lives. Students will read a selection of Egyptian writings in translation, across different periods of Egyptian history and a wide variety of genres including narrative tales, (auto)biographies, wisdom texts, poetry, and official records. We will also explore questions of authorship and audience: who wrote Egyptian texts, who did they intend to read them, and how might evidence of alternative forms of story-telling such as oral performance be preserved in written form?

DELIVERY MODE

• Hybrid (F2F & Online simultaneously)

SUGGESTED READING

• R.B. Parkinson, Reading ancient Egyptian poetry: among other histories (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), ISBN: 978-1-405-12547-5
• W.K. Simpson (ed.), The Literature of Ancient Egypt (Yale University Press, 2003), ISBN: 978-0-300-09920-1
• T. Wilkinson, Writings from Ancient Egypt (Penguin, 2016), ISBN: 978-0-141-39595-1

COURSE OUTLINE

• Texts in context: the materiality of writing, and the preservation of textual material
• Who wrote Egyptian literature: authorship and scribal training
• Who could read Egyptian literature: audience, literacy, and oral performance
• Narrative tales; Didactic literature; Biography vs autobiography
• "Historical" fiction and "fictional" history; Songs, poetry, and hymns

LEARNING OUTCOMES

By the end of this course, students should be able to:

1. Develop a broad familiarity with Egyptian literary and historical texts, across a variety of genres and time periods
2. Situate texts in their historical and physical contexts, and consider the intersection of literary and historical writing
3. Examine the accessibility of texts in both written and oral forms to an ancient Egyptian audience
4. Understand how material texts (e.g. papyrus, wall inscriptions) are preserved