BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION

I. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE LITERATURE

The Egyptian people became known to our European world only in their old age original: "dotage", when they had spent their last energies in unsuccessful struggles against foreign oppressors. At that time, they clung stubbornly to the beliefs and the outworn practices of the past, as if by doing so they could still maintain their position among the nations of the earth. The Greeks viewed this survival from a remote past—so utterly out of keeping with their own enlightened world—with a mixture of disdain and reverence. Thus, the Egyptians have lived on in the imagination of Europeans as the "Chinese of antiquity," so to speak; despite all the discoveries of our time, they still bear the reputation of having been a strange people, stagnant original: "ossified" and without any proper development.

And yet, in the earlier thousands of years of their history, the Egyptians were the exact opposite original: "antithesis" of this popular conception. They were a gifted people, intellectually alert, and already awake when other nations still slumbered. Indeed, their outlook on the world was as lively and adventurous as that of the Greeks thousands of years later. That is plainly seen in their vast technical achievements, and even more so in their visual arts original: "plastic art," referring to sculpture and 3D modeling, which reproduce life so joyously and with such a sure touch.

It is not surprising that such a gifted people took pleasure in giving a richer and more artistic shape to their songs and their tales. An intellectual life developed among them—a world of thought extending beyond the things of every day and the sphere of religion. Since the Egyptians had also invented a system of writing, there grew up among them at an early date a body of writings of a varied kind, which they cultivated and esteemed...