Records of the Past

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. German having kindly prepared or revised the English translations, so that they appear in their last and most correct form. The publication itself has called forth the commendations of all interested in the study, especially those who have paid attention to Egyptian philology and history. It is in fact only by the perusal of these translations of original documents in their integrity that the mind of ancient Egypt can be appreciated and understood. Without such aids the dissertations or works on Egypt are after all compila tions more or less imperfect, without the freshness and strange originality offered by perusal of the words of the original authors, scribes of thirty centuries and more ago, the first men of letters in the ancient world, who wrote these remarkable compositions in the valley of the Nile. The flourishing period of literature ap pears to have been the xixth Dynasty, a golden age of history, poetry, and fiction, although these branches of literature flourished as early as the xiith Dynasty, and ethical philosophy began about the period of the Vth Dynasty. Gradually developing, literature culmi nated under the native monarchs, but rapidly declined with the fall of the Ramessides. Specimens of the best period of writing will be found in the present volume.