Hymns, Prayers and Songs: An Anthology of Ancient Egyptian Lyric Poetry
Overview
Foster gives us the first comprehensive anthology in English of ancient Egyptian lyric poetry. Translated from the original Egyptian, the collection emphasizes the value of the ancient poems as literature. The translations retain an accurate sense of the original language, and the poems are set in the proper, “thought couplet” style characteristic of Egyptian verse. Hymns, prayers, and songs pertaining to religion, the pharaohs, death, and love, among other topics, are included. This unique anthology will be of interest to students and scholars alike, in areas as diverse as Egyptian literature and religion, Near Eastern history, and world literature in translation.
Top Highlights
“But the surviving religious literature shows an almost overwhelming faith in the reality of the life beyond, of living in the presence of Osiris, worshiping him and taking communion with him eternally, while being visited nightly by the great sun-god Rê, whose beams lit the watching faces of the glorified, as he journeyed through the underworld toward his new birth at dawn. The ancient Egyptians were not a somber people, as misconception has it.” (Page 2)
“He was usually called Amun-Rê in the New Kingdom; but in the mind of the individual person, the best translation would be simply our word ‘God.’” (Page 1)
“Egyptians built their tombs of lasting materials because those tombs were their ‘houses of eternity’; and their souls would actually dwell there, as well as in the realm of the afterlife (which we would tend to call ‘heaven’).” (Page 2)
- Title: Hymns, Prayers and Songs: An Anthology of Ancient Egyptian Lyric Poetry
- Author: John Foster
- Publisher: Scholars
- Publication Date: 1995
- Pages: 171
John Foster has written or compiled several books of poetry for children. A noted Egyptologist he has translated many writings and poems from hieroglyphics. He is the author of Ancient Egyptian Literature.