THE SACRED BOOKS AND EARLY LITERATURE OF THE EAST
VOLUME II
E G Y P T
In Translations by
JAMES H. BREASTED, LL.D., Professor of Egyptology in the University
of Chicago; E. A. W. BUDGE, F.S.A., Director of Egyptology
in the British Museum; SIR GASTON MASPERO, D.C.L., Member of
the Royal Institute of France; REV. A. H. SAYCE, LL.D., Professor
of Comparative Philology at Oxford University; ALLAN H. GARDINER,
Litt.D., Editor of the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology;
W. FLINDERS-PETRIE, LL.D., Professor of Egyptology in University
College, London; and other leading Egyptologists.
With a Bri^f Bibliography by
PROF. JAMES H. BREASTED, LL.D.
Jl'ith an Historical Surrey and Descriptions by
PROF. CHARLES F. IIORNE, PH.D.
______________________
PARKE, AUSTIN, AND LIPCOMB, Inc.
NEW YORK . LONDON
In Translations by
JAMES H. BREASTED, LL.D., Professor of Egyptology in the University
of Chicago; E. A. W. BUDGE, F.S.A., Director of Egyptology
in the British Museum; SIR GASTON MASPERO, D.C.L., Member of
the Royal Institute of France; REV. A. H. SAYCE, LL.D., Professor
of Comparative Philology at Oxford University; ALLAN H. GARDINER,
Litt.D., Editor of the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology;
W. FLINDERS-PETRIE, LL.D., Professor of Egyptology in University
College, London; and other leading Egyptologists.
With a Bri^f Bibliography by
PROF. JAMES H. BREASTED, LL.D.
Jl'ith an Historical Surrey and Descriptions by
PROF. CHARLES F. IIORNE, PH.D.
______________________
PARKE, AUSTIN, AND LIPCOMB, Inc.
NEW YORK . LONDON
ILLUSTRATIONS IN VOLUME II
__________________________________________
The Rock Temple of Abu-Simbel .... Frontispiece
The Creation 32
Ptah Fashioning the Egg of the World 48
Osiris, King of the World of Death 64
Isis, Wife of Osiris 96
Khepera, the Beetle-god of Resurrection 144
A Page from the Book of the Dead . 160
Anubis, the Guide through the Underworld .... 208
Hathor Emerges from the Mountain of Tombs . . . 240
Horus, the God-child, Rising from the Lotus .... 272
Nut, the World Mother 320
Thoth, the Chief Friend of Man 416
_________________________________________
"Be not arrogant because of that which thou knowest; deal
with the ignorant as with the learned; for the barriers of art
are not closed, no artist being in possession of the perfection to which he aspires"
__FROM THE EGYPTIAN BOOK OF PTAH-HOTEP,
EARTH'S EARLIESTKNOWN TEACHER.
Introduction
__________________________________________
The Rock Temple of Abu-Simbel .... Frontispiece
The Creation 32
Ptah Fashioning the Egg of the World 48
Osiris, King of the World of Death 64
Isis, Wife of Osiris 96
Khepera, the Beetle-god of Resurrection 144
A Page from the Book of the Dead . 160
Anubis, the Guide through the Underworld .... 208
Hathor Emerges from the Mountain of Tombs . . . 240
Horus, the God-child, Rising from the Lotus .... 272
Nut, the World Mother 320
Thoth, the Chief Friend of Man 416
_________________________________________
"Be not arrogant because of that which thou knowest; deal
with the ignorant as with the learned; for the barriers of art
are not closed, no artist being in possession of the perfection to which he aspires"
__FROM THE EGYPTIAN BOOK OF PTAH-HOTEP,
EARTH'S EARLIESTKNOWN TEACHER.
Introduction
MAN'S FIRST HOPE OF IMMORTALITY AND THE DAWNING OF
THE CRITIC SENSE
THE stupendous fact which makes Egyptian literature
most worth our reading is that in Egypt mankind first
soared to splendid heights of religious thought. There, so far
as we now know, earnest and able men first faced with profound
intellectual meditation the spiritual problems of this
world. There the mass of men, for the first time, arranged
their earthly lives upon a firm-set confidence that there was a life beyond.
The civilization of Egypt may possibly be as ancient as that
of Babylonia. Eecent scholars incline to regard that of Babylonia
as the older of the two, and the other as perhaps an offshoot
from it; but in that case the younger branch outgrew
the parent in both wisdom and culture. Perhaps the swifter
blossoming of Egyptian thought if we may call a progress
awift when it extended over unknown thousands of years
was due to the more secluded character of Egypt's situation.
There and in Babylonia were two great rivers, the Nile and
the Euphrates, whose vast and fertile valleys were fitted by
Nature to be the seat of men's easiest development. But the
Euphrates valley was exposed to warlike attack from every
side. Again and again the Babylonian civilization was overthrown
by hordes of invading barbarians. New kingdoms
rose only on the ruins of the old ; and war remained ever the
chief business and chief thought of life. In Egypt, on the
contrary, the Nile valley was marvelously sheltered from attack
by the spreading deserts on every side. It is true that
during Egypt's early history we twice find her invaded and
partly conquered by foreign hosts ; but in each case she finally
drove out the invaders. Moreover, these invasions occurred
at intervals of over a thousand years. Thus the Egyptians
were left, far more than any other nation in the world, to work
out their own destinies, to build up their own civilizg ion in peace.
The history of Egypt before the days of Rome is divided
into four clearly marked periods. The chronology of the
first of these is still a puzzle to our scholars, though very
recent criticism is establishing an outline of dates which may
prove fairly accurate. According to this, our oldest definite
Egyptian date sets Khufu, or Cheops, as building the greatest
of the pyramids about 3000 B.C. 1 Khufu ruled in what is
called the Fourth Dynasty of kings ; so King Menes, who is
regarded as the founder of the First Dynasty ; that is, as the
first ruler to gather all Egypt into a single Empire, must
have lived about 3400 B.C. Back of Menes there is an older,
uncountable age of lesser kingdoms and slowly developing
civilization. Forward from his day extends the period of
the first or what we now call the " Ancient " Egyptian Empire,
which he founded. This was ruled by the six earliest
dynasties of kings, and lasted for almost a thousand years ; far
longer, that is, than the later and better known world-empire
of Rome was able to maintain itself.
The earliest literary remains of Egypt come down to us
from the closing years of this
" Ancient Empire." They are
the hieroglyphics inscribed on the inner walls of pyramids,
which were the giant tombs of kings, or sometimes on the
lesser tombs of high officials. Some rough-carved, barely
readable names survive on even earlier tombs, dating from
Menes or from lesser kings before him. But Egyptian literai
The date of Khufu'a reign, and all dates of the Ancient and Middle
Empire are, by some scholars, set back about fifteen hundred years
earlier. The evidence is inconclusive, but seems to favor the later date.
tare, in the sense of many connected phrases making a full
document, bursts upon us, as it were, suddenly and startlingly
in a completed form within the pyramid tombs of King Unis,
of the Fifth Dynasty, and his successors of the Sixth. The
secret rooms within these pyramids preserved the solemnly
impressive ancient writings, sheltered them through long ages
from all the ruin elsewhere wrought by Nature and by man.
The secret of these pyramids was not penetrated, and their
ancient picture-writing found, until 1880. So that the study
of these texts, and all they have taught us of the growth of
religious thought in Egypt, is very recent. They are called
the " Pyramid Texts " and the most important of them are given in our present volume.
These Pyramid Texts are wholly religious. They continue
echoing in a thousand different forms one central religious
thought. The dead king has gone on to a life beyond,
has become a god among the gods. As yet the inscriptions
do not follow this thought of immortality beyond the king.
There is no assertion that other men live beyond death;
and in the slight remains of this period gathered from sources
outside the pyramids there is no evidence of such a belief.
The other literary remnants from the Old Empire are
chiefly biographical, the boastful account of some high official
who, building his own tomb during his lifetime, records
his proud successes on the pictured walls. Then there is one
truly remarkable historical fragment, a carven stone now
preserved in an Italian museum at Palermo, and hence called
the " Palermo stone." This gives us a list of ancient kings
and some note of the events occurring during their reigns. It
is, however, BO worn and broken that the record gleaned from
it is almost hopelessly fragmentary.
In our reprinted documents from this ancient and almost
forgotten kingdom we have included one other ; not this time
a fragment painted or carved on stone, but a real book or
manuscript, written on papyrus, the plant which the Egyptians
learned to make into the most ancient sort of paper.
This genuine, early book is not really of the Old Empire;
it belongs to the next period. But the writer then recorded
an ancient tale, or rather a collection called " The Tales of
the Magicians." The manuscript dates apparently from
about the year 2000 B.C. ; that is, from the Twelfth Dynasty,
but the stories it tells are of King Khufu and his predecessors,
and so reach back yet another thousand years for the pictures
that they offer. So crude and simple are the tales, so manifestly
dealing with a still childish and uncritical audience,
that we feel justified in referring their origin to the Ancient
Empire of which they tell, and so calling them the
" oldest stories in the world." This first " Old Empire "
of Egypt seems to have been overthrown
by a foreign invasion, and there were centuries of
disorder, but the Egyptian princes or great lords were never
wholly overthrown and gradually they reestablished their
supremacy in a sort of " feudal period," or rule of the barons.
Over these one king was again set up; and a second period
of peaceful splendor ensued about the year 200 under the great
Twelfth Dynasty of emperors, or Pharaohs.
From this " Middle Empire " or feudal period the surviving
texts are fairly numerous. There is another papyrus
manuscript, The Precepts of Ptah-hotep, which disputes with
the Tales of the Magicians the rank of
" oldest book " in the
world. There are other similar studies of wisdom or books
of good counsel, perhaps the most interesting of them being
that of King Intef to his son. The surviving manuscript of
this is of much later date, but King Intef was of the Eleventh
Dynasty, and the original set of
" counsels " must have been almost as old.
Far more interesting than these books of counsel are the
religious texts surviving from the Middle Empire. Of these,
commonly called the
" Coffin Texts," the most striking are
given in our volume. We have not from this age any one
great religious collection like the Pyramid Texts, but the
Coffin Texts cover a much wider range. They are the hieroglyphs,
usually in verse form, carved upon the coffins of the
dead. They are usually brief, but they speak not merely for
kings but for all classes of society. They teach us that the
idea of life beyond life had now become universal. But
mingled with it is a growing cynicism. Some of these texts
assert a confident and even arrogant assurance of the future ;
others breathe a gentle sadness, a feeling that this life by itself
is of little worth, while the promise of the one beyond is very doubtful.
Among the other pieces surviving there is one of peculiar
interest in that it offers us man's earliest study of rhetoric,
of the art of words. It is a deliberate invention, not a legend
or a myth, but a story invented by the rhetorician for the express
purpose of displaying the beauty and the power of
speech when handled as an art. We offer to the reader this
curious beginning of conscious art, and also the earliest
" travelers' tales." One of these, the narrative of Sinuhit,
has a special value. It presents to us our earliest picture of
Palestine, the Holy Land, depicting it at a period long preceding
Moses, and perhaps as early as the days of Abraham.
This second or "Middle Empire" of Egypt was overthrown,
as the first had been, by foreign invasion. This time
the invaders were the Hyksos, or Shepherd Kings, who came
from Asia, and under one of whom Joseph the Israelite rose
to power. When the Hyksos were finally expelled about 1600
B.C., the Egyptian rulers who conquered them built up the
third or Great Empire, which flourished for another four
hundred years or more and then gradually declined in power
until it was conquered by the Persians in 525 B.C.
The period of the " Great Empire " constituted the best
known and probably the most brilliant age of ancient Egypt.
It was the time of Thutmose III., the famous general of the
Eighteenth Dynasty, and of Ramses II., the great warrior of
the Nineteenth Dynasty. In these days Egypt was no longer
isolated. She came in close touch with Babylonian civilization
and extended her conquests over Palestine and Syria
up to the very borders of the Babylonian realm.
The literature of this brilliant period is extensive and important
Most impressive of its writings is the stupendous
Book of the Dead. This, the best known of all Egyptian
books, is the great religious ritual. As much of it as possible,
sometimes a hundred and forty chapters, was enshrined in
every tomb, carved or painted, or written on papyrus. It
taught the dead man, or reminded him, just how he was to
meet each incident of the life beyond, how he would be judged
for his deeds, how each god would demand knowledge of
some facts of his life, and how he was to answer each. This
enormous mass of assumed knowledge as to the minute details
of the hereafter implies that the entire future was now assumed
as a matter of course. We can not call it pretense;
it was inherited tradition. Perhaps in the first invention the
details had been frankly fanciful; but the centuries had
gradually forgotten this, and man had come to accept all
these instructions for the hereafter with blind faith.
Beyond the Book of the Dead our volume gives you a few
other religious writings of the Great Empire, including earth's
earliest ghost-story, and then turns to the historic inscriptions
and semi-historic legends of this great age. These include
what has been called the first Egyptian epic, the poem of
the poet Penta-our, celebrating a great victory of Ramses II.
over the Hittites. King Ramses himself so prized this poem
with its impassioned description of his prowess that he had
it inscribed upon his buildings again and again. So that
next to the Book of the Dead it is the most widespread and
well-known of Egyptian texts.
There is one interesting account of travel, dating from this
age ; and then we turn to its fiction,
" The Doomed Prince,"
and the best-known story of all Egyptian fiction,
" The Two Brothers."
Chiefly, however, the surviving fiction of Egypt belongs to
a yet later period, the age of submission, the centuries when
Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans each in turn conquered
Egypt, while the intervening years of brief inde
pendence were still chiefly swayed by foreign monarchs.
During these long centuries of ever-increasing weakness
down to the Christian era, Egyptian literature turned mainly
to story-telling. The old religious confidence was lost beyond
recall. There are, however, two interesting religious
works belonging to these days: the Book of the Breaths of
Life, which speaks an almost modern philosophy, and the
Litany of Re, a priestly chant which shows that the faith of
the priests themselves had developed along very different lines
from the outgrown religion still solemnly proffered to the mass of the people.
Beyond these come the stories of the age of weakness. One
of these offers us the oldest-known case of literary forgery.
This tale was deliberately misrepresented by the members of
a local priesthood as coming from a more ancient source, and
was thus used to secure wealth and honor for the local shrine.
Rather than close our volume with this instructive but unhonored
tale, we then give some other of these lighter tales,
quaint and often attractive, and even with a breath of the heroic toward the last.
To sum up what has been said, we give you here all the most
notable Egyptian works. These are of value chiefly through
their revelation of man's growth in religion and in power of
analytic thought. The religious growth may here be traced
through the Pyramid Texts of the Old Empire to the Coffin
Texts, hymns, and books of counsel of the Middle Empire,
and so to the Book of the Dead and lesser religious works of
the Great Empire. Still later than these come the moral
works, such as the Breaths of Life, of the period of weakness.
Similarly, the historic side of Egypt may be followed from
the old Palermo stone, through biographies and legends, up to
the boastful inscription of Thutmose III., and the epic song
of Ramses IL's victory. The oldest story-telling in the world
also may be followed from the crude wonders of the Tales of
the Magicians, through the Middle Empire rhetorical tale, to
the more skilful romances of the latest age. Or we can follow,
if we will, the enlarging " travelers' tales." Each of
these lines will be opening to us the fascinating study of this
earliest recorded development of human thought. We can
trace the Egyptians' advance, beginning with a narrow view
of life possible only to savages, childlike, animal-like in its
unthinking blindness; and we can see this view expand until
Egyptian thinkers reach a breadth of reasoning power such as
the average man of to-day will be quick to admit is apparently equal to his own.
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CONTENTS OF VOLUME II.
EGYPT
INTRODUCTION
Man's First Hope of Immortality and the Dawning of the Critic Sense ... 3
THE ANCIENT EMPIRE (3500 B.C.-2475 B.C.)
I. THE EARLIEST EGYPTIAN REMAINS
The Boast of Methen, the First Autobiography (3000 B.C.) 15
The Palermo Stone, Egypt's First Historical Record (2750 B.C.) 17
II. THE SECRET PYRAMID TEXTS (2625 B.C.)
III. BIOGRAPHY, TRAVEL, AND ROMANCE
The Words of Uni, the King's Friend (2550 B.C.) 37
Inscriptions of Harkhuf, the First Explorer (2525 B.C.) 43
Tales of the Magicians, Earth's Earliest Stories (2000 or 3000 B.C.) 48
IV. THE PRECEPTS OF PTAH-HOTEP (2700 B.C.?),
The Oldest Book in the World 62
THE MIDDLE EMPIRE (2500 B.C.-1600 B.C.)
V. RELIGIOUS AND SEMI-HISTORIC TEXTS
The "Coffin Texts" 84
A Mother's Charm against Evil Spirits . . 86
The First Poem of Pessimism 87
Songs of the Harper 89
The First Misanthrope 92
The Tomb Record of Huron Ameni ... 97
Counsels of Kimi Intef (2100 B.C.?) .... 98
Counsel of King Amrncmliet (1970 B.C.) . . 108
VI. TALES OF ROMANCE AND TRAVEL
The Eloquent Peasant, the First Study of Rhetoric 115
The Shipwrecked Sailor 133
Memoirs of Sinuhit '. 138
Fragments of the Earliest Ghost-Story . . . 149
VII. THE BOOK OF THE DEAD, Egypt's Holy Scripture
THE GREAT EMPIRE (1600 B.C.-525 B.C.)
VIII. HYMNS TO THE ONE UNIVERSAL GOD
To Aton, the Creator 291
The King's Own Hymn 296
Hymn to Re as Sole God 298
Hymn to the Nile 300
IX. THE RELIGION OF THE POOR IN ANCIENT EGYPT
Prayers for Mercy 309
X. HISTORY AND LEGEND UNDER THE GREAT EMPIRE
The Expulsion of the Shepherd Kings ... 330
Annals of Thutmose III, the Egyptian World-Conqueror (1500 B.C.) 332
Biography of a Soldier Under Thutmose III . 340
"The Taking of Joppa," Legend of a Stratagem Under Thutmose 344
The Building Record of a Pharaoh .... 350
XL EGYPT'S CHIEF EPIC POEM (1287 B.C.)
The Triumph of Rameses II, by Penta-our. . 361
XII. TALES OF ROMANCE AND TRAVEL
The Two Brothers, Egypt's Best-known Story . 381
The Doomed Prince 392
Travels of Unamunu in Syria 400
THE AGE OF WEAKNESS (525 B.C. A.D.)
XIII. THE BOOK OF THE BREATHS OF LIFE,
The Secret Teaching of the Egyptian Priesthood
XIV ROMANCES 425
The Princess Possessed by a Demon, The Oldest
Literary Forgery 427
Prince Satni and the Magic Book .... 431
BIBLIOGRAPHY 455
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