Egyptian religious poetry

§0 EGYPTIAN RELIGIOUS POETRY

simply the spot in the east or the west where the sun was seen close to the earth. As the sunrise and sunset are often very colourful, the horizon was believed to be inhabited by brilliantly shining entities. These were originally connected with, though separate from human beings, but in the later religion a man on death could become a Horizon-dweller, a Shining One.

(c) POETRY

Egyptian religious poetry is so early in Time that there is nothing now remaining with which it can be compared. The only contemporary poetry is the Babylonian which is entirely different in outlook. The Hebrew poetry can, at the earliest, be dated only to the xixth or xxth dynasty, and is so largely based on the Egyptian both in outlook and form, that it is possible to say that the children of Israel not only “ spoiled the Egyptians ” of “ jewels of silver and jewels of gold”, but took away with them their religious literature. Because it was translated into English by a company of poets, Hebrew religious poetry has to a large extent been absorbed into English literature in a way now impossible for any other literature, and its origin has been completely forgotten. But to Egypt belongs the splendour of being the fons et origo of the sentiments and even the language of the Psalms.

The actual forms of the poems remained in use for many centuries and were common to all ancient poetry. There are four main forms.

“Parallelism of members”, ie. repetition of the same idea in different words, is a common device in early poetry, e-g. “Thy word is a lantern unto my feet and a light unto my path.” Its chief use in Egyptian is in the epithets ascribed to the Deity, “ King of kings, Lord of lords, Prince of princes,