The Immortality Of Writers
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The Immortality Of Writers
The Immortality of Writers is an Ancient Egyptian wisdom text likely to have been used as an instructional work in schools. It is recorded on the verso side of the Chester Beatty IV papyrus (BM 10684) held in the British Museum. It is notable for its rationalist skeptical outlook, even more emphatic than in the Harper's Songs, regarding an afterlife. The scribe advises that writings of authors provide a more sure immortality than fine tombs."''Ancient Egyptian Literature''", Miriam Lichtheim, Volume II The New Kingdom, p. 175-178, University of California Press, 1976, The text is dated to the transition period between the 19th Dynasty The Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt (notated Dynasty XIX), also known as the Ramessid dynasty, is classified as the second Dynasty of the Ancient Egyptian New Kingdom period, lasting from 1292 BC to 1189 BC. The 19th Dynasty and the 20th Dynasty fur ... and the 20th Dynasty. ...Those writers known from the old days, the times just after the gods. ...
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British Museum
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It documents the story of human culture from its beginnings to the present.Among the national museums in London, sculpture and decorative and applied art are in the Victoria and Albert Museum; the British Museum houses earlier art, non-Western art, prints and drawings. The National Gallery holds the national collection of Western European art to about 1900, while art of the 20th century on is at Tate Modern. Tate Britain holds British Art from 1500 onwards. Books, manuscripts and many works on paper are in the British Library. There are significant overlaps between the coverage of the various collections. The British Museum was the first public national museum to cover all fields of knowledge. The museum was established in 1753, largely b ...
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Harper's Songs
Harper's Songs are ancient Egyptian texts that originated in tomb inscriptions of the Middle Kingdom (but found on papyrus texts until the Papyrus Harris 500 of the New Kingdom), which in the main praise life after death and were often used in funerary contexts. These songs display varying degrees of hope in an afterlife that range from the skeptical through to the more traditional expressions of confidence.Lichtheim, 1976, p. 115 These texts are accompanied by drawings of blind harpists and are therefore thought to have been sung.''" Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs"'', James P. Allen, p343, Cambridge University Press, 2000, Thematically they have been compared with The Immortality of Writers in their expression of rational skepticism. Background The distinction between songs, hymns and poetry in ancient Egyptian texts is not always clear. The convention is to treat as songs those poetic texts which are depicted with musical instrume ...
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Miriam Lichtheim
Miriam Lichtheim (3 May 1914, Istanbul – 27 March 2004, Jerusalem) was a Turkish-born American-Israeli Egyptologist, known for her translations of ancient Egyptian texts. Biography Miriam was born in Istanbul on May 3, 1914, to Richard Lichtheim – a German-born Jewish politician, publicist, and notable Zionist – and his wife Irene (''née'' Hafter), a Sephardic Jew whose first language was Greek. Her older brother, born 1912, was the British Marxist journalist George Lichtheim. From 1913 to 1917 Richard Lichtheim was the successor to Victor Jacobson, representative of the Zionist World Organization in Istanbul. Due to suspicions of espionage, the Lichtheim family returned to Germany in 1919 following the end of World War I. In 1934, the family emigrated to Palestine, where Miriam studied under Hans Jakob Polotsky in the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In a paper of recollections about her teacher she recalls that, at the beginning of the year, in Polotsky's Egyptian class t ...
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19th Dynasty
The Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt (notated Dynasty XIX), also known as the Ramessid dynasty, is classified as the second Dynasty of the Ancient Egyptian New Kingdom period, lasting from 1292 BC to 1189 BC. The 19th Dynasty and the 20th Dynasty furthermore together constitute an era known as the ''Ramesside period''. This Dynasty was founded by Vizier Ramesses I, whom Pharaoh Horemheb chose as his successor to the throne. History Background The warrior kings of the early 18th Dynasty had encountered only little resistance from neighbouring kingdoms, allowing them to expand their realm of influence easily, but the international situation had changed radically towards the end of the dynasty. The Hittites had gradually extended their influence into Syria and Canaan to become a major power in international politics, a power that both Seti I and his son Ramesses II would confront in the future. 19th Dynasty Seti and Ramesses II The New Kingdom of Egypt reached the zenith of ...
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20th Dynasty
The Twentieth Dynasty of Egypt (notated Dynasty XX, alternatively 20th Dynasty or Dynasty 20) is the third and last dynasty of the Ancient Egyptian New Kingdom period, lasting from 1189 BC to 1077 BC. The 19th and 20th Dynasties furthermore together constitute an era known as the ''Ramesside period''. This dynasty is generally considered to be the start of the decline of Ancient Egypt. History Background Upon the death of the last pharaoh of the 19th Dynasty, Queen Twosret, Egypt descended into a period of civil war, as attested by the Elephantine stela built by Setnakhte. The circumstances of Twosret's demise are uncertain, as she may have died peacefully during her reign or been overthrown by Setnakhte, who was likely already middle aged at the time. 20th Dynasty A consistent theme of this dynasty was the loss of pharaonic power to the High Priests of Amun. Horemheb, a pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty, had restored the traditional Ancient Egyptian religion and the priesthood ...
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Ancient Egyptian Texts
Ancient Egyptian literature was written in the Egyptian language from ancient Egypt's pharaonic period until the end of Roman domination. It represents the oldest corpus of Egyptian literature. Along with Sumerian literature, it is considered the world's earliest literature. Writing in ancient Egypt—both hieroglyphic and hieratic—first appeared in the late 4th millennium BC during the late phase of predynastic Egypt. By the Old Kingdom (26th century BC to 22nd century BC), literary works included funerary texts, epistles and letters, hymns and poems, and commemorative Autobiography, autobiographical texts recounting the careers of prominent administrative officials. It was not until the early Middle Kingdom of Egypt, Middle Kingdom (21st century BC to 17th century BC) that a narrative Egyptian literature was created. This was a "media revolution" which, according to Richard B. Parkinson, was the result of the rise of an intellectual class of scribes, new cultural sensi ...
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