The Literature of Ancient Egypt: An Anthology of Stories, Instructions and Poetry [Paperback]

This is officially the third edition of a volume of translations originally published in hardcover in 1972, and reprinted with expansions in paperback in 1973. That second version remained in print, with a change of covers (from orange to black, and with different art), for over two decades. Its 352 pages contained contributions by R.O. Faulkner and E.F. Wente, Jr., in addition to those by the editor, William Kelly Simpson. Although less comprehensive than Miriam Lichtheim's three-volume "Ancient Egyptian Literature" (University of California Press), it included material not found in that collection, and the quality and the reliability of the translations was at least equally notable. The only defect was that additions to the original selections had been shoved in at the back, instead of grouped with similar works, according to the original plan of the volume.

There have been several new collections of translations in recent years, notably those by John L. Foster and R.B. Parkinson, and I am inclined to consider this "third edition" among them. The selection of material has been changed, Faulkner's selections have been dropped, and two new contributors, Robert K. Ritner and Vincent A. Tobin, have been added. The volume now runs over 600 pages, and only a small portion of the difference is due to greatly expanded bibliographies and generous layout.

Mainly for the benefit of those who know something about ancient Egypt -- especially those familiar with the older version of the book, or the Lichtheim, Foster, or Parkinson collections -- the contents now include:

Narratives and Tales of Middle Egypt (four stories, all familiar, but now based on the latest textual editions); Late Egyptian Stories (nine stories); Instructions, Lamentations, and Dialogues (thirteen texts); "From the Religious Literature," (selections from the Pyramid Texts, the Coffin Texts, and the Book of the Dead -- the "Negative Confession" from Chapter 125 -- and The Hymn to the Aten, Penitential Hymns, and the "Book of the Heavenly Cow," which is at once a myth, a spell, and funerary text); Songs and Royal Hymns (a cycle in honor of Senwosret III, and "The Love Songs and The Song of the Harper"); Royal Stelae (nine texts of widely varying dates); Autobiographies (four texts); Scribal Traditions ("The Satire on the Trades" and selected school exercises); and, finally, the entirely new section of Demotic Literature, including stories (Setne Khaemuas among them), prophecies, fables, and a late Instruction text ('Onchsheshonqy, including the frame story) (eight items).

The useful set of illustrations surviving from the first edition remains unchanged, but has been relocated toward the front of the volume.

Anyone with a serious interest in Ancient Egypt will want to have this book available. Beginners may find it all a bit overwhelming at first, but the introductory material and concise annotations should be helpful, and, with a very little effort from the reader, the stories, poems, and proverbs should begin to speak for themselves. It is clearly intended for serious adult readers, but I was in High School when I read the old 1923 Erman translation of "The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians," in Blackman's 1927 translation from the German, and this is far easier to digest, as well as a lot more up-to-date.

(Come to think of it, Erman/Blackman was probably in the 1966 paperback edition, as "The Ancient Egyptians: A Sourcebook," for which Simpson supplied an introduction and bibliographic notes -- I suppose I've been reading his work even longer than I remembered.)

The only real complaint I would make is that the cover too closely resembles the later printings of the second edition, which likewise featured a pharaonic bust on a black background; if I hadn't seen the thick spine, I wouldn't have looked at the back, seen "Third Edition" in somewhat subdued lettering, and taken time to read part of Simpson's Introduction, which gave me a reason to buy it.

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

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.