Between literature and history: receptions of poetry in ancient Egypt

ABSTRACT

This article explores literary reception in ancient Egypt, focusing on the enigmatic poem The Teaching of Amenemhat, ca. 1550–500 BCE. Combining material philology, textual criticism, and reception theory, the article investigates how the poem’s readers interpreted it by examining the contexts in which manuscripts were read, the textual interventions copyists made, and the cultural currents that shaped readers’ expectations. The article introduces Amenemhat, before discussing several individual readers and their encounters with the poem. Next, based on textual analysis of the surviving manuscripts, the article identifies interpretive trends occurring over time. The article then contextualizes the poem’s reception within scribal culture. A final section discusses the innovative reception of Amenemhat by the Nubian king Taharqo. The article aims to bridge the gap between Egyptology and literary studies by using ancient Egyptian literature to explore new approaches to reception history and by introducing this understudied poem to a wider audience.

KEYWORDS:

• Reception
• ancient Egypt
• poetry
• materiality
• manuscripts

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Richard Parkinson and Niv Allon for their insightful comments and suggestions throughout this project. I also thank all the fellows of the Wolf Humanities Seminar for reading and offering very helpful feedback on an early version of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 On the sbꜢyt genre, its cultural context, the problems of reconstructing ancient genres, and a literature review of theoretical and methodological approaches to wisdom instructions, see Hagen, Ptahhotep, 30–60.

2 On The Instruction for Merikare, see Quack, Merikare. For other examples of texts that self-designated as sbꜢyt but do not fully conform to the conventions of the genre, see Hagen, Ptahhotep, 31–2.

3 There are several competing theories of ancient Egyptian metrics, e.g. Fecht, Literarische Zeugnisse; Lichtheim, “Have the Principles”; Foster, “Thought Couplets”; Burkard, “Der formale Aufbau”; Mathieu, “Études IV.” Most theories of ancient Egyptian metrics, as Hany Rashwan points out, are derived from European poetic traditions and are therefore of questionable utility in the study of ancient Egyptian literature (Rashwan, “Against Eurocentrism,” 173–8). In this article, I use the word “poem” not to imply any specific metrical or prosodic structure, nor to draw a contrast with prose, but rather to imply a literary register that involves intentional, artful, and sometimes playful manipulation of language for expressive effect. I use “poem” not as a technical term, but rather to express my own critical opinion regarding Amenemhat’s beauty and artistic merit (Huda Fakhreddine, pers. comm.).

4 Helck, Lehre. See also slight variations on Helck’s system in Adrom, Amenemhet.

5 All translations are mine unless otherwise noted.

6 My translation of these stanzas differs from many other Egyptologists’, both in my somewhat freer interpretation, intended to communicate the section’s pacing and drama, and in my readings of certain grammatical and idiomatic ambiguities. Due to our imperfect understanding of the Middle Egyptian language, as well as to the style of the poem, there is no stanza of Amenemhat without ambiguous passages, which give rise to competing interpretations among modern scholars. Here, for example, I take the perplexing §6e, jsw spẖrw ḫꜤw nḏw r-ḥr.j, as, literally, “when weapons were circulated and I was consulted about”—as opposed to the competing interpretations “when weapons of my counsel were wielded” (Parkinson, Voices, 50) and “weapons for my protection were turned against me” (Lichtheim, Literature I, 137)—which I then render more freely as “when weapons were circulated and questions whispered” in an effort to match what I perceive as the tense atmosphere of this moment in the poem, just before Amenemhat’s guards begin their violent attack.

7 Here, as in many other places, the poem leaves gaps that the reader must fill in e.g., Iser, The Act of Reading. The reading presented here is my own.

8 Most of these can be found in Faried Adrom’s variorum edition, though since its publication several more have been found.

9 Parkinson, Reading, 30–40.

10 Posener, Littérature et politique, 61–86.

11 This is not to suggest that the propaganda model has gone uncriticized. Several prominent Egyptologists have argued that interpreting ancient Egyptian literature as essentially propagandistic is reductive, anachronistic, and Eurocentric; see, e.g., Baines, “Interpreting”; Parkinson, Poetry, esp. 13–16; Quirke, Egyptian Literature, 47–9.

12 See, e.g., Blumenthal, “Die Lehre (Teil I)”; Blumenthal, “Die Lehre (Teil II)”; Goedicke, Studies; Jansen-Winkeln, “Das Attentat”; Thériault, “Propaganda”; Obsomer, Sésostris Ier.

13 Those who argue for a successful assassination include de Buck, “Instruction”; Goedicke, Studies; Grimal, “Corégence”; Burkard, “Als Gott”; Parkinson, Poetry. Others argue that Amenemhat survived the attack: e.g., Anthes, “Legal”; Jansen-Winkeln, “Das Attentat”; Thériault, “Propaganda”; Allen, Literature. This seems to have been an unresolved question for ancient readers as well. As I will argue in this paper, some readers, such as the 25th Dynasty pharaoh Taharqo, seem to have interpreted the poem as a description of a failed assassination attempt. In contrast, Manetho, in his third-century BCE history of Egypt, states that Amenemhat I (here called Ammanemês) was “murdered by his own eunuchs” (Manetho, History, 67, 71), suggesting that interpretations of the poem, Egyptian history, and the relationship between the two were not static.

14 Material philology began somewhat controversially (e.g. Cerquiglini, Éloge de la variante) but in recent years has been embraced by Egyptian philologists e.g., Parkinson, Reading; Hagen, Ptahhotep; Ragazzoli, Scribes.

15 E.g., Martindale, Redeeming the Text; Hardwick, Reception Studies.

16 Jauss, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, 22–32, 18.

17 Parkinson, “Framing,” 29.

18 The foundational work on this topic is Baines and Eyre, “Four Notes on Literacy.” Their estimate has been widely repeated; however, the article has inspired significant debate, including about the varying roles of literacy in Egyptian society and about different kinds of literacies and semi-literacies. For a thorough bibliography on this subject, see Ragazzoli, Scribes, 26 n. 18.

19 McDowell, “Teachers,” 225; Bryan, “Evidence for Female Literacy”; Janssen, “Literacy and Letters,” 89–90; Quack, “Ein Bericht,” 927–8. While there is some evidence of literate women in ancient Egypt—including one manuscript in this corpus, which may have been copied by a woman training to be a scribe, one Henutnefret from Deir el-Medina—it is very limited.

20 Stephen Quirke makes a similar argument: “In the hunt for ancient reading … copyists may be the principal identifiable readers” (Egyptian Literature, 44). See also Morenz, “Egyptian Life,” 240–1.

21 Schneider, “Periodizing,” 182–3.

22 Parkinson, Reading, 176.

23 Iwaszczuk, “Legacy,” 176–7.

24 El-Enany, “La vénération.”

25 E.g., Herodotus, Histories, 2.102–10; Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, 1:1.53–58. See also Liotsakis, “Notes,” 501–2 n. 5, for extensive bibliography on the identity of Sesostris.

26 Verhoeven, Dipinti.

27 Stauder, Linguistic Dating, 435–97.

28 McDowell, “Teachers,” 221–2; Gasse, “Le K2,” 118.

29 Hagen, Ptahhotep, 92–3.

30 Gasse, “Le K2”; but cf. Hagen, Ptahhotep, 85–6.

31 Hayes, Ostraka, 28, Pl. XXV.

32 Parkinson, Poetry, 243–4.

33 Arnold, Senwosret I, 74 no. 198, pl. 90.

34 Arnold, Amenemhat I, 4 nn. 35–36.

35 Delnero, “Memorization.”

36 Scholars such as James P. Allen and Richard B. Parkinson have argued that ink density and the locations of a copyist’s inkwell dips can be suggestive about the method by which the manuscript was copied, as well as of the scribe’s attention to the text he was copying: Allen, Heqanakht, 77, 81–3; Parkinson, Reading, 90–2. These interpretations have been largely accepted among Egyptian philologists, and ink density has since become an important feature to consider when conducting a materially oriented analysis of a manuscript.

37 Inena was so accomplished that there is debate over whether or not he was still an apprentice at this point in his career: see, e.g., Ragazzoli, “Nouveau.” Due to the hierarchical structure of his profession in the royal treasury, that distinction may not have been particularly meaningful for Inena’s day-to-day life or for this encounter with Amenemhat.

38 Liotsakis, “Notes,” 505 n. 26.

39 Maspero, “Instructions,” 165.

40 Gardiner, “Earliest Manuscripts,” 479.

41 Williams, “L’énigme,” 213.

42 Morenz, “Review: Adrom,” 141.

43 No other 18th Dynasty copy fully preserves §8a–b, but the portions that survive in the 18th Dynasty copies match P. Millingen’s version. Geoga, “Papyrus Millingen,” 229–30.

44 Egyptologists use the verb sḏm “to hear” in the third-person singular (.f “he”) as the paradigm when discussing verb forms. Until the development of Coptic in around the third century CE, ancient Egyptian scripts only wrote consonants, with vowels left unrepresented. As a result, we do not know today how ancient Egyptian was pronounced. While there are several competing reconstructions, most Egyptologists pronounce ancient Egyptian words by inserting a short e between consonants; for example, sḏm.f is pronounced SEDJ-em ef. This is an artificial pronunciation chosen solely for scholarly expedience; it does not attempt to reproduce ancient pronunciations.

45 This is the simplest reading of how §8b is written in O. DeM 1346, but other readings are possible: one could also read the verb as a negated infinitive (nn sḏmt šnyt swꜢḏ.j n.k, without the court’s hearing that I would hand over to you) or take nn as an alternative writing of nj (nj sḏmt šnyt swꜢḏ.j n.k, the court did not hear that I would hand over to you), as is common in the Ramesside manuscripts. Like the reading proposed in this paper, both of these interpretations maintain the assertion that the court was unaware of Amenemhat’s chosen successor but lose the sḏmt.f’s precision and implication of Amenemhat’s unrealized intention to inform the court of his choice.

46 Similar versions are found in the other 18th Dynasty manuscripts that preserve this section, O. Senenmut 144 and T. Brooklyn I vs.

47 E.g., Volten, Zwei altägyptische politische Schriften; Blumenthal, “Die Lehre (Teil I)”; Grimal, “Corégence”; Allen, Literature.

48 Allen, Middle Egyptian, 213; Junge, Late Egyptian Grammar, 189–95. jw has different functions in Middle and Late Egyptian. Here, it must take on its Late Egyptian function as a subordinator.

49 Few Ramesside manuscripts preserve this excerpt in its entirety, and those that do have errors that may distract readers who are less familiar with Middle and Late Egyptian. For the sake of clarity, and to maintain focus on the particular textual variation under discussion, I have presented a composite version of §5b–c drawn from P. Sallier I and II, O. Heidelberg 2012a/b+1005, and O. Oxford 950.

50 E.g., Posener, Littérature et politique; Blumenthal, “Die Lehre (Teil I).”

51 E.g. Burkard, Textkritische, 165.

52 Or perhaps even all of them. Middle Egyptian often does not make the relationship between textual components explicit, and literary texts in particular tend to prefer ambiguity. It is possible that 18th Dynasty readers were already interpreting §5c as “(for) the magnitude of fighting … ” and that the Ramesside addition of jw simply clarified the relationship between §5b and §5c.

53 Parkinson, Poetry, 242.

54 As this portion of the poem is preserved in only a few fragmentary manuscripts—all from the Ramesside period, with no surviving 18th Dynasty witnesses—I have again offered a composite version here drawn from P. Sallier II and O. OIC 13636.

55 zꜢ.j occurs in two other manuscripts that are not represented in this hieroglyphic transcription due to slight variations in their versions of §14d: O. OIM 13636, which includes both mꜢꜤ-ḫrw and zꜢ.j (Foster, “Conclusion”), and O. OIM 2029, which includes zꜢ.j but employs a different form of the first-person pronoun .j (Geoga, “A New Copy”).

56 McDowell, “Teachers,” 223–9.

57 I thank Niv Allon for suggesting this possible reading of the poem.

58 Hagen, “Libraries,” 277–97.

59 Parkinson, Voices, 150.

60 Parkinson, 150.

61 This is the much-discussed Daressy fragment, two blocks that are now lost but survive in a copy made by Georges Daressy in the late 19th century. See, e.g., Yoyotte, “À propos d’un monument”; Fischer-Elfert, “Representations,” 130–1; Mathieu, “Réflexions.”

62 Parkinson, Voices, 150.

63 Quirke discusses objections to this theory, comparing it with the “modern ‘fabrication’ of an author ‘Marie de France’” in medieval studies: Egyptian Literature, 32. Quirke points out that Khety was a popular Middle Kingdom name and implies, therefore, that these three Khetys—the one in the Teaching of Khety, the one in “The Immortality of Writers,” and the one in the offering formula—could very well be different people. Even so, it seems very likely that by the Ramesside period, they would have been conflated into a single figure—real or imaginary—as all three are invoked in various texts and inscriptions within the same context of scribal self-fashioning.

64 Although today we generally refer to pharaohs by their personal names, the ancient Egyptians tended to use their throne names. The poem itself uses both names in its title: “Beginning of the teaching that the dual king, Sehetepibre, son of Ra, Amenemhat, justified, made.”

65 E.g., Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning.

66 Ragazzoli, “Beyond Authors,” 98.

67 Due to questions about the rendering of Kushite names in Egyptian script, scholars are uncertain how to read this king’s name, with some favoring Piankhy and others arguing for Piye. Pi(ankh)y is a commonly accepted writing that acknowledges this uncertainty.

68 Fredrik Hagen provides an excellent overview of ancient Egyptian intertextuality, the difficulties of its study, and previous work on the topic in Ptahhotep, 143–51.

69 Assmann, “Das ägyptische Prozessionsfest,” 115–6; Török, Image, 395–8.

70 Geoga, “Kawa.”

71 Török, Image, 52–4, 369.

72 Török, 290–3.

73 Török, Kingdom, 189–96; Morkot, “Archaism.”

74 Kawa VI: Eide et al., FHN, vol. I, no. 24, ll. 23–24; translation by Richard H. Pierce.

75 Eide et al., vol. I, no. 34, l. 26. This stela is known as the Enthronement Stela or Kawa VIII.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Wolf Humanities Center of the University of Pennsylvania, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Open Graduate Education and Dissertation Completion Award at Brown University.