TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE

When I undertook the task of preparing the English edition of Professor Erman’s The Literature of the Egyptians original German: Die Literatur der Aegypter, I intended to carry out my work in the way I suggested in my review of the book in the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology (volume 10, pages 193 and following). This meant that I planned to make better use of Dr. Gardiner’s Sir Alan Gardiner (1879–1963) was a preeminent English Egyptologist Notes on the Story of Sinuhe. I also intended to take full advantage of that scholar’s excellent translation of the Complaints of the Peasant, which was recently published in the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology (volume 9, pages 5 and following), and to make various corrections—many of which I noted in my review—to the translations of other texts.

Shortly after I had begun the work, I received a letter from Professor Erman urgently requesting me not to make any changes to his translations. He asked that if I felt I must make changes, I should limit myself to putting them in footnotes. Out of respect for his wishes, I abandoned my original plan. However, I also decided that his suggestion regarding footnotes was not practical. I realized that if I followed it, the footnotes would often take up more than half the page. This would not only make the book look cluttered but would also be very distracting for the reader.

I felt it was essential, however, that the English versions of the Egyptian texts in this volume should not simply be "translations of translations" meaning a translation of Erman's German, rather than a translation of the original Egyptian. Consequently, every translation has been made directly from the original Egyptian language. I have, however, kept them strictly in line with Professor Erman’s interpretation as he presented it in his own German translations. Only on the rarest occasions have I ventured to differ from