Poetry in ancient Egypt

Religious anthems, royal eulogies, mythological or popular tales, songs of love, many texts are composed in worms, according to very precise rules. However, the poetry in ancient Egypt , unlike poetries Greek or Latin or of traditional French poetry, generally presents a succession of Distique S comprising a fixed number of accented units.

It is under the Nouvel Empire that the poetic texts in love make their appearance on the papyrus or on Ostraca. The blossoming of this literary kind probably finds its origin under the living conditions of the New Empire, period ostentation and favourable with the blooming of arts. Ambient prosperity transforms manners, which become freer, simplicity not being more one virtue. Poetry in love, exciting the personal feelings but also physical attraction, combines this freedom and this preciosity while seeking to express esthetic dimension of it.

Metric Egyptian woman

The distich

The distich most representative of Egyptian poetry shows the characteristic to be always made up of a first towards longer than the second. The first has four accented units, while the second has only three of them.

The cutting of an Egyptian literary text in distiches and worms is often facilitated, in the texts in Hiératique, by a specific formal mark of punctuation.

After having finished a page, the scribe frequently added, with red ink, of the points intended to separate from/to each other the distiches and the worms. Moreover, the beginning of a new stanza could be in “heading”, i.e. written with red ink.

Example of a distich : The Great Anthem with Hâpy:

The tristique one

The Tristique, is a distich to which a sequence of two accented units is added. It is appeared as a succession of three worms, first composed of four accented units, the second of three and the third of two.

Example of tristic a : two stanzas of the Great Anthem with Amon:

Poetry in love

The Egyptians give to these collections various titles: “ Doux Towards ”, “ Chant of the entertainment ”, etc It is possible that the texts known as - or were sung (?)- with a musical accompaniment. These poems always put in scene the “brother” (the lover) and/or the “sister” (the amante). Sometimes the text makes alternate, stanza after stanza, the words of the one and other: (him) : the Single one, the beloved, without-similar, most beautiful of the world…
(it) : Of its voice, my beloved disturbed my heart… Space in love is very often composed of their two respective houses: does not delay, join to it (at his place!) , with, despite everything, if they are pure relations, a preponderance of the house of the young girl. A whole course in love is thus put in scene, which must lead to the marriage.

Like all the forms of the Egyptian art, poetry in love prefers the suggested sensuality with the erotism posted .

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