The Ancient Egyptian civilization, famous for its pyramids, pharaohs, mummies, and tombs, flourished for thousands of years. But love poems composed thousands of years ago may provide a more intimate glimpse of the lives of everyday ancient Egyptians.
“Poetry is perhaps the greatest forgotten treasure of ancient Egypt,” said Richard Parkinson, an expert on ancient Egyptian poetry at London's British Museum, home to the largest collection of Egyptian artifacts outside of Cairo. While historical accounts and biographies inscribed on the insides of tombs often give idealized accounts of ancient Egyptian life, poetry gives real insight into human nature and its imperfections, he said.
A group of love poems have been found in an excavated workers' village on the outskirts of the Valley of Kings, where many pharaohs are entombed. The verses allow poetry lovers and Egyptophiles alike to tap into the emotional side of Egyptian daily life. "People tend to assume all ancient Egyptian writing is religious, so the secular nature of these songs and of much other poetry continue to surprise readers," Parkinson said.
Written during Egypt's New Kingdom (1539-1075 B.C.) but likely composed much earlier, these songs are surprisingly direct about love and romance in ancient Egypt, using metaphors, repetition, and other poetic techniques familiar to poetry readers today.
Here is an excerpt from one of these poems:
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The Flower Song (Excerpt)
To hear your voice is pomegranate wine to me: I draw life from hearing it. Could I see you with every glance, It would be better for me Than to eat or to drink. (Translated by M.V. Fox)
The ancient Egyptian love songs of the New Kingdom (1,550-1,069 BC) are known from a variety of sources including ostraca and papyri. These are, for the most part, written in Late Egyptian Hieratic and should be understood within a broader trend of recording genres which may have only existed as a part of the Egyptian oral tradition prior to this period.
The love songs employ a rich array of imagery and allusion in order to create a highly sensual atmosphere within each composition. Scholars have observed numerous recurring themes within the corpus as a whole, both in terms of structure and perspective, as well as references to the religious sphere. Among these recurring motifs, references to hiddenness and darkness abound.
There seems to be a general agreement within the songs that dictates that amorous matters should be carried out in private. This emphasis on privacy can be seen in many works. The trees here take on a kind of sentience and sometimes act as secret keepers. While it may be safe to assume that the lovers here are engaged in more than simply speaking, that the tree also ensures discretion about their words is significant. It may indicate that privacy may have been desired for romantic exchanges of all kinds, not just sexual ones.
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References to sexual acts are not direct, but alluded to through imagery and wordplay. Atmospheric quality is thus of the utmost importance. These works use privacy and hiddenness as a means of creating a rich, sensual atmosphere that allows for the cultivation of intimacy.
An example of this can be found in the following excerpt:
Now, you shall bring it to the house of the sister (i.e. Her gate will be raised.
The element of hiddenness here is established by the reference to the beloved woman’s “gate”. That the woman’s (literal) gate is open to her lover draws him into the private, hidden space of her home, away from the prying eyes. Night in this passage has significance as well. It works in conjunction with this sense of privacy and strengthens it.
It was in his bed that I found my brother (i.e.
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It is clear, however, that the woman in the poem has just spent the night with her lover. Yet it is night and the termination of night rather than the brightening of dawn in and of itself, which lend this passage its rich and sensual atmosphere.
Here is another excerpt from a love poem:
The Crossing (Excerpt)
I'll go down to the water with you, and come out to you carrying a red fish, which is just right in my fingers. (Translated by M. Fox)
Women's voices were strong in Egyptian poetry-as the narrators of poems or as lovers making choices about their beloveds, for example. This strength confirms that women had a higher position in ancient Egyptian culture than in other societies at the time, Wilfong said. Women may even have written some of the poetry.
One of Wilfong's favorite poems, a harpist's hymn, celebrates life in a culture often thought to be purely focused on the afterlife. Dating from about 1160 B.C., this poem was found on the tomb of Inherkhawy, a supervisor of workers at the royal burial ground in the ancient city of Thebes:
The Harper's Song for Inherkhawy (Excerpt)
So seize the day! hold holiday! Be unwearied, unceasing, alive you and your own true love; Let not the heart be troubled during your sojourn on Earth, but seize the day as it passes! (Translated by J.L. Foster)
Romantic love was a popular theme for poetry, especially in the New Kingdom (1570-1009 BCE) when several works appear to praise lovers and wives alike. As I have said above the New Kingdom saw a flourishing in this cosmopolitan atmosphere with Egypt being more influenced by those outside its borders and so these poems and songs began to be written down and expanded as a genre. The poems were written on papyri or ostraca and date primarily to the 19th / 20th Dynasty and seem to have been read aloud with musical accompaniment from harpists, and so might have been a form of entertainment for the banquet goes.
A famous collection of love poems can be seen in the Chester Beatty Papyri. The most elaborate of these series of songs is the song composed of a seven-stanza song which plays out a conversation between and young man and a young woman of their love in separation. This song follows are few commons features, the pair of lovers call each other brother and sister and sing of their love in separation a common theme amongst describing their feelings of joy, /loss at their particular romantic situation, or delivering monologues to their own heart.
The song starts with the man taking the first verse. In this opening verse, the man sings of the woman’s beauty and wishes to approach her. At length, he describes the object of this affections as ‘without rival, most beautiful of all, she looks like the star-goddess rising at the start of the good new year… her hair is true lapis, her arm gathers gold’.
In the second verse the women, separated, in her mother’s house she sings of longing for her love to arrive. Describing her longing for him to be there with her, ‘Come to me, let your beauty be seen, let father and mother be glad.
Unfortunately, in the next verse, the man seems to abandon hope of reaching her seemingly lost saying that ‘River and road looked a like: I couldn’t decide where to put my feet’.
The song continues with the woman struggling with her desires exclaiming at the end of the verse ‘she is a woman fallen by love’.
In the next verse, we turn back to the man, having righted himself after getting lost he rejoices that he has seen the woman “overjoyed, ecstatic, great when told. there she is these, look, she has come’.
As following this alternating between the pair, we return to the woman as she has now seen the man approaching the house, she begins to sing of her hope that her mother will share the same sentiments as she does, ‘How my heart races for joy, brother, when I can see. If only the mother knew my desire’.
Now we come to the final verse, will the two lovers finally get to meet? The final verse is given to the man and after seven days of separate, the man has become sick with only the woman being able to cure him “sickness has entered deep into me; I have grown heavy in my limbs….
But these poems did more than just reflect the feelings of those speaking in them. The scenes they described as reflected in the tomb paintings. References to fishing and fowling, to plants, trees and above all rich colours.
The poem from Chester Beatty I describes the woman as having hair of lapis, golden skin and fingers like dainty lotus blossoms. Flowers and plant play a major hook in the so-called ‘Flower Song’. Which has a woman describing the joy she has from seeing her love that she compares her feelings to being ‘like a field of fragrant blooms, an abundance of blossoming buds… a lovely place for a stroll while you hold your hand in mine’.
Portrayals of married couples in the statuary, paintings and tomb reliefs of high -placed men and royal craftsmen alike seem to radiate a similar tenderness to that of the poems above. The couples are usually depicted standing or sitting side by side holding hands and the wife often has an arm around the neck or shoulder of her husband.
With the New Kingdom, alongside this surge in poetry, the loving relationships of kings and queen begging to be revealed. A particularly famous example of this would be the relationship of King Tutankhamun and his wife Queen Ankhesenamun. This does also reflect the artistic style shift that came with the Amarna period but I won’t go into detail about that just now. However, a brief run-through of this style would produce some key characteristics. The scenes as much more relaxed and informal compared to other artistic phase, faces have pronounced facial folds, narrow/slitted eyes, while the body itself consisted of a thin, attenuated neck, sloped shoulders, a heavy paunch, large hips and thighs, and rather spindly legs.
In keeping with this more informal style, Ankhesenamun is always pictured with her husband, with it being noted that the artist has through this sought to emphasis the devotion to one another by proximity, hand gestures and facial expression. This relief is currently on display at the Neues Museum in Berlin shows King Tutankhamun and Ankhesenamun and is often referred to as ‘a walk in the garden’. In this snapshot, the ‘togetherness’ of the couple is there even though they aren’t touching. This togetherness is achieved through the style, body shape and colours, which appear in the same amount in both individuals.
Here follows background on ancient Egyptian love songs, together with the transliteration and translation of several.
The songs are written in the Late Egyptian phase of the Egyptian language, a formal version of the spoken language of New Kingdom Egypt. No Middle Egyptian equivalent survives, although parts of the Middle Egyptian composition now known as Kemyt seem to present a man justifying his absence to a griefstruck woman.
Perhaps the most elaborate series of songs is the cycle of seven stanze on the back of a papyrus roll now preserved in the Chester Beatty Library and Gallery, Dublin (Papyrus Chester Beatty I, verso, column 1 to column 5, line 2: other love songs follow the cycle). In alternate stanze, a young man and a young woman sing of their love in separation. In the original, each stanza is introduced by the word ‘mansion’ (like stanza, the Italian word for a chamber) and a number; the first or last words in each stanza play on the sound of the word for the number.
Picture the scene: from across the way, a young man spots a young woman who takes his breath away. She is exquisite, with dazzling eyes and sweet lips. Every part of her body is the epitome of feminine beauty. She is beyond compare. A papyrus today in the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin bears several works of Egyptian literature from the New Kingdom. Alongside the Contendings of Horus and Seth, a text in praise of Rameses V, and several short business documents sit three groups of love songs. It is in one of these poems that we meet the smitten youth. He is not alone, though, in his longing. The girl has spotted him, too. And yet neither learn of the other’s feelings. As she bemoans: “He knows nothing of my desire to embrace him!”
Across seven stanzas, the poem’s audience learns of the yearnings of each, of their heartsickness at their unrequited love. Only the audience, though, knows the truth about these star-crossed young lovers and their shared infatuation. The thoughts of the young man and woman are presented in alternating stanzas; each takes it in turn to express their feelings, first the boy and then the girl. While the poem starts with the description of the girl’s beauty, with the boy extolling the virtues of her all parts of her body, we don’t have the same description of him. Instead, the rest of the poem is one of the pain of unrequited love. Of love as a sickness that invades the body and cannot be cured by doctor or magician. Of a heart that flutters and makes you crazy.
As with Egyptian literature in general, the author - or authors - of the poem is unknown. The 20th dynasty scribe of the Chester Beatty papyrus was seemingly interested in such love songs, collecting several of them together, but the diverse texts on this papyrus means that it can’t be understood as an anthology of love songs. The title of this poem is ‘The Great Entertainment’, where ‘entertainment’ is literally ‘distraction of the heart’; the text is meant to be performed.
And so who would perform the poem and where? Again, specifics are unclear, but it is not far-fetched to imagine it at either a private affair - at banquets or court festivities - or a religious festival, perhaps connected with Hathor, the goddess associated with love, music, dancing, and fertility. Tomb scenes from the New Kingdom show images of women playing musical instruments and dancing, such as that of Nebamun and Djeserkareseneb. In the latter, four women play the harp, lute, lyre, and double reed flute, while a young girl dances between them. The accompanying inscription reveals that this is part of a larger banquet.
Despite being written centuries ago, the love songs of ancient Egypt would likely sound familiar to us. "The themes of love songs are pretty universal," Sheikholeslami says, with the musical poetry focused on how attractive our beloved is, the longing to be with our adored, and how painful separation can be. The love songs composed along the ancient Nile also took a number of cues from nature, just as modern love songs often focus on the birds and the bees. Still, the local conditions around the cultural centers of ancient Egypt certainly influenced the imagery in the poetry. The annual inundation of the Nile was incredibly influential in ancient Egyptian art, a life-giving event. "It's likely that the love songs were sung during a festival celebrating the annual flood of the Nile in mid-July, which brought the water that renewed life and fertility in the flood plain after the spring to summer drought," Sheikholeslami says. This was the ancient Egyptian equivalent of what we might call "summer love," when "it was time to make love and create new life," Sheikholeslami notes.
Most of what's known about these songs comes from their lyrics, the written poetry of romance. What we don't know about is how these songs would have sounded to listeners. The melodies are lost to time. Still, Sheikholeslami says, the songs "probably features harps, wind instruments, and percussion instruments, some of which are still played in the Middle East."
Our modern top 40 love songs are an echo of what ancient Egyptians expressed so long ago. The emotions and experiences - the bitter and the sweet of romance - connect us across time. "In some ways," Sheikholeslami says, "we are not so different from the people of the Nile Valley, and pharonic culture is still relevant to us today."
Technical Details
- Provenance: Western Thebes, southern Egypt.
- Date: New Kingdom, ca. 1160 BCE.
- Language: Egyptian (Late Egyptian; written in hieratic)
- Collection: Chester Beatty Library, Dublin (Papyrus 1; verso).
- Designation: Papyrus Chester Beatty I
Bibliography:
- Alan H. Gardiner, The Library of A. Chester Beatty. Description of a Hieratic Papyrus with A Mythological Story, Love-Songs, and Other Miscellaneous Texts. The Chester Beatty Papyri, No. I (Oxford University Press, 1931), pp. 27-38 and pls 16-17, 22-26, and 29-30
- Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature II: The New Kingdom (University of California Press, 1976), pp. 182-6
- Michael V. Fox, The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs (Wisconsin, 1985), pp. 51-64
- Vincent A. Tobin in William Kelly Simpson (ed.), The Literature of Ancient Egypt: An Anthology of Stories, Instructions, and Poetry (Yale University Press, 2003), pp.
- Renata Landgráfová and Hana Navrátilová, Sex and the Golden Goddess: I. Ancient Egyptian Love Songs in Context (Czech Institute of Egyptology, 2009).
- Renata Landgráfová and Hana Navrátilová, Sex and the Golden Goddess: II. The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs
References:
- Shaw, I. and Nicholson, P., 2008. The British Museum Dictionary Of Ancient Egypt. London: British Museum Press.
- Mark, Joshua J. “Love, Sex, and Marriage in Ancient Egypt.” Ancient History Encyclopaedia. Last modified September 26, 2016.
- Fowler, B., 1994. Love lyrics of ancient Egypt. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
- Strouhal, E. (1992) Life of the Ancient Egyptians. Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press.
Musicians and dancers perform for banquet goes from the tomb of Nebamun.
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