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An Anthology of Ancient Egyptian Texts: Life Through Literature
This book provides a small collection of love stories, biographies, fairy tales, reports of military campaigns and other textual accounts of life in Ancient Egypt. They range widely and so provide a varied and interesting view of life in Ancient Egypt for many areas of society and so gives an insight into daily life. This is a welcome and insightful view into the world of the pyramids and the pharaohs which can easily seem so far detached from our own lives that it can be hard to understand.This book is aimed at anyone with an interest in Ancient Egypt and everyday life as well as those with a specific interest in literature. The lack of any scholarly commentary plus the inclusion of a glossary means that the book is very accessible to those with no prior knowledge of Ancient texts and their scholarly study, making it a great taster and introduction to the area.
128 pages, Hardcover
First published September 26, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 11, 2022
The collection presents literary texts from the ancient Egypt, from the earliest times to the coptic era. Most (all) of these texts you will encounter during undergrad studies in Egyptology.
Sadly as the collection isn't giving you any help letting you understand the texts as there is no commentary, which would be needed for anyone not having studied Egyptology or at least Middle Egyptian to a certain degree. So the general reader will most likely get nothing out of these text at all.
But for me at least it was a nice remembrance back to Uni and to discussing these texts in lectures.
Sadly as the collection isn't giving you any help letting you understand the texts as there is no commentary, which would be needed for anyone not having studied Egyptology or at least Middle Egyptian to a certain degree. So the general reader will most likely get nothing out of these text at all.
But for me at least it was a nice remembrance back to Uni and to discussing these texts in lectures.
May 21, 2019
I'd like to give this book a higher rating, but I had some issues with it.
Some of the stories were a little difficult to read; there were a number of sentences that I read many times trying to figure out what was meant. The structure of some of the sentences was unusual to say the least. While I'm sure that at least some of that was present in the original texts, I'm wondering if some came from the translators themselves. (It would appear that the many translators are German and if they originally translated from Ancient Egyptian to German and then German to English that could explain some oddities).
Another issue is most likely the fault of the publisher. This book has a retail price of $34.95. For 94 pages, 69 of which are the translated texts; the rest are a preface, a bibliography (mostly in German), a note on the texts used, biographies of the translators, a glossary, and yes, they even counted the endpapers which are of course totally blank. I just checked and most of the stories are available online for free in the original Egyptian and in English. I realize that printing and publishing are expensive and this is something of a niche title, but although I bought this book at a discount I still paid far too much for what is here.
The glossary is pretty basic (wouldn't most people picking up a book titled "The Anthology of Ancient Egyptian Texts" already be familiar with Isis and Osiris and the title "King of Upper and Lower Egypt", etc?), although it can be useful for place names outside of Egypt. The bibliography, as previously mentioned, is mostly German-language material and thus not likely to be of much use to most of the readers of this English-language book. There are no illustrations or photos of any kind, nor are the translated texts accompanied by the untranslated originals which is unfortunate for anyone who wanted to practice transliterating and translating hieroglyphs or hieratic.
While the price tag suggests a premium product, the end result feels pretty bare-bones.
Honestly, just skip this and read the stories online for free.
Some of the stories were a little difficult to read; there were a number of sentences that I read many times trying to figure out what was meant. The structure of some of the sentences was unusual to say the least. While I'm sure that at least some of that was present in the original texts, I'm wondering if some came from the translators themselves. (It would appear that the many translators are German and if they originally translated from Ancient Egyptian to German and then German to English that could explain some oddities).
Another issue is most likely the fault of the publisher. This book has a retail price of $34.95. For 94 pages, 69 of which are the translated texts; the rest are a preface, a bibliography (mostly in German), a note on the texts used, biographies of the translators, a glossary, and yes, they even counted the endpapers which are of course totally blank. I just checked and most of the stories are available online for free in the original Egyptian and in English. I realize that printing and publishing are expensive and this is something of a niche title, but although I bought this book at a discount I still paid far too much for what is here.
The glossary is pretty basic (wouldn't most people picking up a book titled "The Anthology of Ancient Egyptian Texts" already be familiar with Isis and Osiris and the title "King of Upper and Lower Egypt", etc?), although it can be useful for place names outside of Egypt. The bibliography, as previously mentioned, is mostly German-language material and thus not likely to be of much use to most of the readers of this English-language book. There are no illustrations or photos of any kind, nor are the translated texts accompanied by the untranslated originals which is unfortunate for anyone who wanted to practice transliterating and translating hieroglyphs or hieratic.
While the price tag suggests a premium product, the end result feels pretty bare-bones.
Honestly, just skip this and read the stories online for free.
October 12, 2020
All I have to say it is not what I expected and it was a slow and boring read. I do love reading all thing on Egyptian culture and history but this was slow and not very informative. So there were things in there that was already known and did not explain what it had to do with the story.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews