The criteria for establishing dates of origin are palaeography, language, and content. While only the extant versions of texts can be dated palaeographically, the most reliable dating is provided by their termini ad quem or post quem. Examples are the Teaching of Amennakht or the Letter of Menna. It is certain that these texts do not date before the historical period of their authors in the Twentieth Dynasty (ad quem), to which they also belong palaeographically. The palaeographical date of the earliest written record of The Taking of Joppa and The Doomed Prince in P. Harris 500 (early Nineteenth Dynasty) and the reconstructed terminus post quem of their origin lie somewhat further apart from each other. The Taking of Joppa in the time of Thutmose III is an historical event; in the case of the Doomed Prince the cultural implications of the text make a pre-middle Eighteenth Dynasty origin virtually impossible (Helck 1987). This applies similarly to the Tale of Apophis and Seqenenre, although the earliest written record in P. Sallier I (late Nineteenth Dynasty) already comes some time later than the historical facts which form the basis of the tale (see below).
More difficult is the analysis of the date of origin of texts located with certainty to the New Kingdom on a palaeographical basis, but whose subject matter does not clearly refer to this period. As a rule, either their position in language history or the perceived historical implications of their content is analyzed. Recently a general case was made for the merits of linguistic dating methods as against palaeography and historical context (Lieven 2007: 223-54). The discussion is important because it raises the problem of the differentiation of the New Kingdom literary languages into a pre-Amarna ‘‘Classical Egyptian,’’ possibly intermingled with Late Egyptianisms, and a post-Amarna ‘‘Literary Late Egyptian’’ (Lieven 2007: 237-8). This distinction has led to the division of New Kingdom literature into a pre-Amarna and a post-Amarna epoch (Baines 1996a), which is correct on the basis of manuscript history but otherwise problematic. That being said, the post-Amarna period with its multitude of new texts composed in ‘‘Literary Late Egyptian’’ is regarded as the heyday of New Kingdom literature, from which all its famous narrative texts and new genres emanate. However, this plethora of post-Amarna material can obscure the true state of our evidence: as a rule the manuscripts originate from agglomerations of findings such as in Deir el-Medina and Memphis (Quirke 1996: 390-1) and exemplify the accidents of discovery rather than the actual distribution of literary texts over time (Baines 1996a: 165). If one considers further that the co-existence of genres such as the laus urbis (‘‘Praise of a City’’), and the hymns of personal piety, which are recorded later in the Miscellanies, is documented as early as the Eighteenth Dynasty (Guksch 1994) and that, furthermore, both genres exhibit close genetic links to the
Love Songs (see below), then a picture emerges of an even development of texts and genres distributed across the whole of the New Kingdom. A pre-Amarna period origin is probable at least for the lyrical genres just mentioned.
World History
