The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians

...examine the original text to see which of these ominous words original: "ominous words" — likely referring to words of ill-omen or "taboo" words common in Egyptian magical and religious texts discussed on the previous page is used there.

A serious difficulty is also presented by the names of people, gods, and Egyptian locations, for which we only know the consonants. To make them pronounceable, I have simply adopted the standard practice used today. However, where a tradition exists, or even just a generally recognized way of writing a name, I have naturally made use of it. The reader should not be surprised, therefore, to find strange-looking original: "monstrous" forms such as Khekheperre-sonbu An unwieldy phonetic reconstruction of an Egyptian name side-by-side with Grecized forms such as Amenōphis, or pure Greek forms such as Heliopolis, Arabic forms such as Siut, or modern European forms such as Luxor and Thebes. This variety cannot be avoided, and in the end, it causes no great harm.

In my translations, I have indicated free renderings of passages and other additions original: "interpolations" using italics. Brackets [ ] denote restorations text added by the editor to fill a gap based on context or other copies. I could not naturally reproduce the gaps I was forced to leave in the translation in their full length, which is often quite significant. I have been satisfied to distinguish between two kinds of such omissions: . . . means that a single word is missing, while - - - - indicates that a full sentence or a longer passage is missing.

Before printing began, Mr. Grapow Hermann Grapow, a noted German Egyptologist and Erman's student undertook the tedious task of comparing my translations once more with the original texts. This helped us avoid various omissions and mistakes. I thank him here once again for this friendly service.

¹ An e is inserted quite arbitrarily throughout these names to make them pronounceable. Furthermore, the so-called "weak consonants" alef, ayin, w, and y are rendered as the vowels a, u, and i. However, in the case of many frequently occurring names, I have allowed myself the privilege of using different, more familiar spellings. In Egyptian hieroglyphs, only consonants were written; modern scholars add "e" and treat certain consonants as vowels so the words can be spoken aloud.