Ancient Egyptian Literature (World Literature in Translation)

This book is absolutely essential for budding Egyptologists, people learning Ancient Egyptian (hieroglyphs), or anyone interested in reading ancient Egyptian texts in translation.It is a marvelous resource with a sundry of translated texts from the Old, Middle, and New kingdoms. Previously, each time period was it’s own book, but this publication combines all three into one anthology.If you already own the other books, this book would be redundant, aside from the forward written by Antonio Loprieno.This corpus includes most that students will be expected to translate for ancient Egyptian into English, which is why I say it is essential. You can use this book to check your work. Granted some of the wording Miriam Livhtheim employed may be different from what other translators used, but the conveyed meaning is the same.I commend her on her extensive work.When I set out to buy her works, I was hoping to get hardback editions of the three previous books. My reasoning was that hardbacks hold up with extensive use (this edition only comes in paperback) and I was honestly concerned when someone said this book would be too large to carry around (but it isn’t-It’s 7.5” long, 5” wide, and 1.5” deep. (I included photos from different angles so you can see just how small/large it is.))Would I prefer that this book be hardcover? Yes. Am I happy I bought it regardless? Yes!Purchasing the other three books in hardback, with no markings, would have cost more than this compendium. I paid $25 for a used copy, marked good and I think that was money well spent. The book has a small tear where the cover meats to binding, but otherwise, the pages are clean without markings, which is key for me, because markings distract me from what I’m reading.Aside from it not being hardback, my only other gripe with this edition is that the cover has a strange matte/velvet finish to it, which shows any and every scuff mark. The finish is similar to something I’ve felt on other non-book items that becomes sticky with time. I hope that does not happen with this book.Overall, very satisfied with my purchase, with the used marketplace seller, and I’m extremely satisfied with the contents of the book. I’m sure I will use it for decades.

Ms. Lichtheim's careful editing has resulted in a huge selection of ancient Egyptian writings that are representative of the immense range and scope of a civilization that survived and thrived for almost 3,000 years. The book is written for the lay reader, but it also has extensive notes with references to scholarly source materials for those who wish to dig deeper.

A word of warning: as explained below, this is a reprint of three volumes, which are also available separately, at least for the time being, at least in Kindle editions. If you recognize them as books you have, you will NOT need to buy this one, unless they are in hardcover or paperback, and you really want some new, interesting but non-essential, front-matter.Miriam Lichtheim’s “Ancient Egyptian Literature” is a uniquely comprehensive (well, probably — I haven’t checked on other languages recently), and very readable, collection of expert translations from the literary (and some other) writings of ancient Egypt, from the Old Kingdom and Middle Kingdom (including early royal inscriptions and selections from the Pyramid Texts) through the New Kingdom, and on to Persian and Greco-Roman times (with stories and Wisdom Literature in Demotic — the late Egyptian vernacular written in a “shorthand” script instead of hieroglyphs, or, in many cases, hieratic, their cursive form.)If you are interested in ancient Egypt, this is practically a must-have. The University of California Press is to be complimented on publishing it in the first place, and for keeping it available.It includes royal inscriptions, and their private counterparts by others, hymns and prayers, proverbial wisdom, fairy tales, and what are probably examples of historical fiction (although both the Tale of Sinuhe and the Report of Wen-Amun have been treated as non-fiction, albeit self-serving), letters, and just about anything else that can be considered “literature,” as opposed to memos, tax receipts, inventories, and other things for which writing was probably invented. Each selection, or block of selections, is prefaced by a short introduction or headnote, and there are some footnotes: but lack of detailed documentation for the trickier texts is its main flaw if used as a textbook.Although it is in places obsolescent (it comes from the 1970s, and Egyptology has not stood still), anyone seriously interested in ancient Egypt will want a copy: and the merely curious probably will find it at least interesting, and might be intrigued enough to look at more translations: on which, see below.)As may be gathered from the publisher’s description and the reviews quoted on the Amazon product page, this is an omnibus edition of three volumes of translations by the late Miriam Lichtheim (1914-2004), which were originally published in hardcover in 1973, 1976, and 1980, respectively, and re-issued in paperback in 1980. It has in places been superseded (including revised translations by Lichtheim), but not replaced as a whole, and it reportedly remains the international standard for its (admittedly limited) field.The three volumes had separate Kindle editions in 2006, each with a new Foreword by another Egyptologist, which I bought some years back as replacements for my hardcopies. These forewords, which discuss, among other things, developments in Egyptology since the 1970s, are included in the omnibus. The Kindle editions had the distinct advantage that they could be highlighted and bookmarked without permanently damaging the copy, and this is obviously still the case with the new arrangement.The original three volumes were each easy to handle, but a hard-copy collection of all three volumes in one binding might be extremely difficult to manage. Amazon gives it a total of 872 pages, which would mean a large brick of a book, too heavy for some people’s hands — and I have even larger books, and have to be cautious in how I handle them, so they don’t fall apart, especially in paperback. I consider it a better option if you can't stand reading on a screen.But the Kindle file is not subject to mechanical limitations (it would by very hard to break the binding!). On top of that advantage, the collected edition is only slightly more expensive than a Kindle version of one of three volumes by itself: Definitely a bargain — I just wish that this had been available sooner, it would have saved me quite a bit of money.So much for the straight review.As I mentioned, Lichtheim also published new and revised translations, accompanied by studies at greater length, after the University of California Press series was completed. These are definitely aimed at the serious student (or at least committed Egyptophiles), not the casual reader. Four volumes are available free as PDFs from the ORBIS BIBLICUS ET ORIENTALIS series, which can be found on-line. They are:“Late Egyptian Wisdom Literature in the International Context: A Study of the Demotic Instructions” (#52, 1983)“Ancient Egyptian Autobiographies Chiefly of the Middle Kingdom: A Study and an Anthology” (#84, 1988)“Maat in Egyptian Autobiographies and Related Studies” (#120, 1992)“Moral Values in Ancient Egypt.” (#155, 1997).There are other, one-volume, collections of translations by modern Egyptologists. (I’m ignoring sometimes modernized reprints of public-domain versions from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.) Some may find these a good alternative, or a supplement: comparing translations can be of help when trying to figure out exactly what a text may imply. They are all, as of this writing, available from Amazon in one or another format, although this is subject to change without notice.One of them was originally issued in 1972, a bit before Lichtheim’s first volume, but was much less comprehensive. Lichtheim mentions it, focusing on its limitations. It was later somewhat expanded, and still later considerable enlarged. This is “The Literature of Ancient Egypt: An Anthology of Stories, Instructions, Stelae, Autobiographies, and Poetry,” edited by William Kelly Simpson, translated by a group of leading Egyptologists of the time. As noted, it was reissued, in paperback, in a slightly enlarged form, in 1973, but it became a real rival to Lichtheim in the Third Edition (“Revised and Enlarged”) in 2003 (Yale University Press, 352 pages), with some new contributors. It also has bibliographic information later than Lichtheim’s, although now also out-dated. Unusually for such a collection, there are illustrations, a limited number, but well-chosen to shed some light on the texts (rather than just being pretty pictures).I reviewed the third edition for Amazon in 2004 (with considerable enthusiasm, although apparently it was too mildly expressed, as at least one reader seemed to miss my endorsement).John L. Foster’s “Echoes of Egyptian Voices: An Anthology of Ancient Egyptian Poetry,” Oklahoma Series in Classical Cultures, (1992) was obviously restricted in coverage but it was incorporated in 2001 in Foster’s “Ancient Egyptian Literature: An Anthology,” by John L. Foster (336 pages) The latter is in print, and definitely worth consulting / comparing.Another restricted selection, this time by period, is “The Tale of Sinuhe: And Other Ancient Egyptian Poems, 1940-1640 B.C.,” by R.B. Parkinson (Oxford World’s Classics, 1998: listed as 336 pages). Parkinson treats as verse what many other Egyptologists consider Middle Egyptian literary prose: at least one of them has remarked that some people are mistaking good grammar for poetic devices.Confusing the issue is that some Egyptian texts are found written as verse, with a distinctive lay-out, but other copies of them are presented in the standard prose set-up. There is no telling what was in the minds of the various scribes responsible.Whether or not one agrees with Parkinson on this issue, the translations are very readable. (Of course, I have no way of judging how good they, or any others, are technically.)Restricted chronologically, and in intended readership, we come to “Middle Egyptian Literature: Eight Literary Works of the Middle Kingdom,” translated and edited by James P. Allen (Cambridge University Press, 2015, 458 pages). This is a companion to Allen’s textbook on Middle Egyptian (the “classical” form of Ancient Egyptian), and is NOT aimed at the general reader.Finally, and again intended for the general reader, is Toby Wilkinson’s “Writings from Ancient Egypt” (Penguin Classics, 2017, 384 pages), available as a Kindle Book. This is designedly quite comprehensive, so there is a lot of overlap with Lichtheim and Simpson et al., but some of it was not previously available in English (or at least not in recent collections).