Egyptian religious poetry

INTRODUCTION si

Ruler of rulers”. The titles and attributes of the Egyptian gods were peculiarly fitted for this method, which was extensively used.

Rhythm was certainly used, but owing to the practice of writing without either vowels or vowel-points it is exceedingly difficult to know how and where the stress should fall. Occasionally a poem is divided into lines, and even stanzas, by marking the end of each line or stanza with a dot in red ink.

A favourite form, which is still common in Egypt in popular songs, is the alternate solo and refrain. When used in religious poetry this form becomes a litany of praise or prayer, with the priest chanting the line of solo and the people answering with the refrain in chorus. Such litanies are found as early as the Pyramid Texts. Psalm 136 is a good example of a similar litany in Hebrew religious poetry.

Paronomasia, play on words or punning, is a recognized form in Oriental poetry, even of the most serious type, being regarded as a fine literary effort. Itis found in Egyptian poetry occasionally, but is somewhat difficult to recognize owing to the method of writing without vowels. In English punning is permissible only in the lightest of light verse.

Rhymed verse is unknown in Egyptian poetry, so also is alliteration, which was a characteristic of early English poetry.

In the proto-dynastic period writing was too new and too little used for literature of any kind to appear ; it was not until the Old Kingdom that any form of poetry is found. Here and there in the inscriptions are a few poetical phrases, as in the formulae for the dead, where there is often a prayer that the deceased person may “ walk on the beautiful roads of the West on which the worthy ones walk in peace, in peace, before the great God”. But the early inscriptions are otherwise severely practical, recording facts but not ideas.