Between the Middle Kingdom and the era known as the New Kingdom falls the time scholars refer to as the Second Intermediate Period (c. 1782-c.1570 BCE). During this era rule in Egypt was divided between the foreign kings of the Hyksos in Lower Egypt at Avaris, Egyptian rule from Thebes in Upper Egypt, and control of the southern reaches of Upper Egypt by the Nubians. Egypt was united, and the Hyksos and Nubians driven beyond the borders, by Ahmose of Thebes (c. 1570-1544 BCE) who inaugurated the New Kingdom. The memory of the Hyksos “invasion” remained fresh in the minds of the Egyptians and was reflected in the political policies and the literature of the period.
The early pharaohs of the New Kingdom dedicated themselves to preventing any kind of incursion like that of the Hyksos and so embarked on a series of military campaigns to expand Egypt’s borders; this resulted in the Age of Empire for Egypt which was reflected in a broader scope of content in the literature and art. Monumental inscriptions of the gods of Egypt and their enduring support for the pharaoh became a vehicle for expressing the country’s superiority over its neighbors, stories and poems reflected a greater knowledge of the world beyond Egypt’s borders, and the old theme of order vs. chaos was re-imagined as a divine struggle. These larger themes were emphasized over the pessimistic and complex views of the Middle Kingdom. The Hyksos and the Second Intermediate Period did the same for New Kingdom art and literature that the First Intermediate Period had for the Middle Kingdom; it made the works richer and more complex in plot, style, and characterization. Rosalie David writes:
New Kingdom literature, developed in a period when Egypt had founded an empire, displays a more cosmopolitan approach. This is expressed in texts that seek to promote the great state god, Amun-Ra, as a universal creator and in the inscriptions carved on temple walls and elsewhere that relate the king’s military victories in Nubia and Syria. (210)
This is true only of the monumental inscriptions and hymns, however. The inscriptions are religious in nature and focus on the gods, usually either on Amun or Osiris and Isis, the gods of the two most popular religious cults of the time. Stories and poems, however, continued to deal for the most part with the conflicts people faced in their lives such as dealing with injustice, an unfaithful spouse, and trying to live one’s life fully in the face of death. These same themes had been touched on or fully dealt with during the Middle Kingdom but the New Kingdom texts show an awareness of other cultures, other values, outside of the Egyptian paradigm.
Middle Kingdom literature was now considered “classical” and studied by students learning to be scribes. An interesting aspect of New Kingdom literature is its emphasis on the importance of the scribal tradition. Scribes had always been considered an important aspect of Egyptian daily life and the popularity of The Satire of the Trades makes clear how readers in the Middle Kingdom recognized this. In the New Kingdom, however, in the works extant in the Papyrus Lansing and the Papyrus Chester Beatty IV, a scribe is not simply a respected profession but one who is almost god-like in the ability to express concepts in words, to create something out of nothing, and so become immortal through their work. Lichtheim comments on the Papyrus Chester Beatty IV:
Papyrus Chester Beatty IV is a typical scribal miscellany. The recto contains religious hymns; the verso consists of several short pieces relating to the scribal profession. Among these, one piece is of uncommon interest. It is a praise of the writer’s profession which goes beyond the usual cliches and propounds the remarkable idea that the only immortality man can achieve is the fame of his name transmitted by his books. Man becomes dust; only the written word endures. (New Kingdom, 167)
The concept of the sacred nature of words had a long history in Egypt. The written word was thought to have been given to humanity by the god of wisdom and knowledge, Thoth. Worship of Thoth can be dated to the late Pre-Dynastic Period (c. 6000-c. 3150 BCE) when Egyptians first began to discover writing. During the 2nd Dynasty of the Early Dynastic Period, Thoth received a consort: his sometimes-wife/sometimes-daughter Seshat. Seshat was the goddess of all the different forms of writing, patroness of libraries and librarians, who was aware of what was written on earth and kept a copy of the scribe’s work in the celestial library of the gods.
Seshat (“the female scribe”), as part of her responsibilities, also presided over accounting, record-keeping, census-taking, and measurements in the creation of sacred buildings and monuments. She was regularly invoked as part of the ceremony known as “the stretching of the cord” in which the king would measure out the ground on which a temple was built. In this capacity she was known as Mistress of Builders who measured the land and lay the foundation of temples. Egyptologist Richard H. Wilkinson writes, “she appears to have had no temple of her own, but by virtue of her role in the foundation ceremony, she was part of every temple building” (167). Her involvement in a temple complex did not end with its inception, however, as she continued to inhabit a part of the temple known as the House of Life. Rosalie David explains the function of this part of the temple:
The House of Life appears to have been an area of the temple that acted as a library, scriptorium, and higher teaching institution, where the sacred writings were produced and stored and where instruction was given. Medical and magical texts as well as religious books were probably compiled and copied there. Sometimes this institution may have been situated within the temple itself, but elsewhere it was probably located in one of the buildings within the temple precinct. Very little is known of its administration or organization but it is possible that every sizable town had one. They are known to have existed at Tell el-Amarna, Edfu, and Abydos. (203)
The name of the institution reflects the value Egyptians placed on the written word. The House of Life – a school, library, publishing house, distributor, and writer’s workshop combined – was presided over by Seshat who made sure to keep copies of all that was produced there in her own celestial library.
During the New Kingdom these works were largely hymns, prayers, instructions in wisdom, praise songs, love poems, and stories. The Egyptian love poem of the New Kingdom is remarkably similar on many levels to the biblical Song of Solomon and the much later compositions of the troubadors of 12th century CE France in their evocation of a beloved who is beyond compare and worthy of all devotion and sacrifice. The same sentiments, and often imagery, used in these New Kingdom love poems are still recognizable in the lyrics of popular music in the present day.
The narrative structure of the prose work of the time, and sometimes even plot elements, will also be recognized in later works. In the story of Truth and Falsehood (also known as The Blinding of Truth by Falsehood), a good and noble prince (Truth) is blinded by his evil brother (Falsehood) who then casts him out of the estate and assumes his role. Truth is befriended by a woman who falls in love with him and they have a son who, when he discovers the noble identity of his father, avenges him and takes back his birthright from the usurper. This plot line has been used, with modifications, in many stories since. The basic plot of any adventure tale is utilized in the story known as The Report of Wenamun which is a story about an official sent on a simple mission to procure wood for a building project. In the course of what was supposed to be a short and easy trip, Wenamun encounters numerous obstacles he needs to overcome to reach his goal and return home.
Two of the best known tales are The Prince Who Was Threatened by Three Fates (also known as The Doomed Prince) and The Two Brothers (also known as The Fate of an Unfaithful Wife). The Doomed Prince has all the elements of later European fairy tales and shares an interesting similarity with the story of the awakening of the Buddha: a son is born to a noble couple and the Seven Hathors (who decree one’s fate at birth) arrive to tell the king and queen their son will die by a crocodile, a snake, or a dog. His father, wishing to keep him safe, builds a stone house in the desert and keeps him there away from the world. The prince grows up in the isolation of this perfectly safe environment until, one day, he climbs to the roof of his home and sees the world outside of his artificial environment. He tells his father he must leave to meet his fate, whatever it may be. On his journeys he finds a princess in a high castle with many suitors surrounding the tower trying to accomplish the feat of jumping high enough to catch the window’s edge and kiss her. The prince accomplishes this, beating out the others, and then has to endure a trial to win the father’s consent. He marries the princess and later meets all three of his fates – the crocodile, snake, and dog – and defeats them all. The end of the manuscript is missing but it is assumed, based on the narrative structure, that the conclusion would be the couple living happily ever after.
The Two Brothers tells the story of the divine siblings Anubis and Bata who lived together with Anubis’ wife. The wife falls in love with the younger brother, Bata, and tries to seduce him one day when he returns to the house from the fields. Bata refuses her, promising he will never speak of the incident to his brother, and leaves. When Anubis returns home he finds his wife distraught and she, fearing that Bata will not keep his word, tells her husband that Bata tried to seduce her. Anubis plans to kill Bata but the younger brother is warned by the gods and escapes. Anubis learns the truth about his unfaithful wife – who goes on to cause more problems for them both – and must do penance before the brothers are united and the wife is punished.
From this same period comes the text known as The Contendings of Horus and Set, although the actual story is no doubt older. This tale is a divine version of the Middle Kingdom order vs. chaos motif in which Horus (champion of order) defeats his uncle Set (symbolizing chaos) to avenge his father Osiris and restore the kingdom which Set has usurped. Horus, the prince, must avenge the murder of his father by his uncle and, to do this, must endure a number of trials to prove himself worthy of the throne. This is the basic paradigm of what scholar Joseph Campbell calls “the hero’s journey” and can be seen in myths around the world and throughout history. The enduring popularity of George Lucas’ Star Wars films is their adherence to the narrative form and symbolism of this type of tale.
The Contendings of Horus and Set, although likely never read by later authors, is a precursor to two of the best-loved and most popular plots in western literature: Hamlet and Cinderella. American author Kurt Vonnegut has pointed out that both of these stories have been re-imagined with great success multiple times. The story of the disenfranchised who wins back what is rightfully theirs, sometimes at great cost, continues to resonate with audiences in the present day just as The Contendings of Horus and Set did for an ancient Egyptian audience.
Probably the best-known piece of literature from New Kingdom texts, however, is The Book of Coming Forth by Day, commonly known as The Egyptian Book of the Dead. Although the concepts and spells in The Egyptian Book of the Dead originated in the Early Dynastic Period and the book took form in the Middle Kingdom, it became extremely popular in the New Kingdom and the best preserved texts we have of the work date to that time. The Egyptian Book of the Dead is a series of “spells” which are instructions for the deceased in the afterlife to help them navigate their way through various hazards and find everlasting peace in paradise. The work is not an “ancient Egyptian Bible”, as some have claimed, nor is it a “magical text of spells”. As the afterlife was obviously an unknown realm, The Egyptian Book of the Dead was created to provide the soul of the deceased with a kind of map to help guide and protect them in the land of the dead.
The literature of ancient Egypt would be a contender as the basis for later works but for the fact that the texts were lost and the language forgotten for centuries. The best one can argue is that the Hebrew scribes who wrote the biblical narratives may have been acquainted with some versions of these texts and later writers took plots and motifs from there but this is speculation. Different cultures come to similar conclusions, without any apparent contact, many times throughout history as best exemplified by the pyramid form of the Maya, Egyptians, and Chinese. It is possible, however, that Egyptian texts inspired or at least lent certain aspects to biblical narratives which were then borrowed by later writers in their works. It is, of course, equally possible that the story of the hero who triumphs over the forces of darkness and disorder simply resonates on a very deep level with humanity and there need be no original work later writers borrowed from.
Following the New Kingdom came the era known as the Third Intermediate Period (c. 1069-525 BCE) and then the Late Period (525-323 BCE) and the Ptolemaic Dynasty (323-30 BCE) after which Egypt was annexed by Rome. Around the 4th century CE Christianity rose to prominence in Egypt and the Christian Egyptians (known as Copts) developed their own script, a kind of hybrid of demotic Egyptian and Greek, and the old texts of hieroglyphic and hieratic script were forgotten. Inscriptions on monuments and temples, and all the texts in the libraries and Houses of Life, became incomprehensible until the discovery of the Rosetta Stone in 1798 CE and the breakthrough in deciphering hieroglyphics it enabled by Jean-Francois Champollion in 1824 CE. By the time Champollion unlocked the mystery of the ancient text a whole world of literature had been created without the benefit of the ancient Egyptian works and yet the plots of these forgotten stories and poems appear in texts all over the world; testament to the primal and powerful nature of these themes to touch upon the most resonant aspects of the human experience.
