Introduction

The present chapter concerns Egyptian manuscript literature from the time of the renaissance that was initiated with the Kushite conquest of Egypt, in the wake of the so-called Libyan Anarchy, until the very end of the Pharaonic civilization. Effectively this period spans one millennium from the late eighth century BC until the middle of the third century AD. The Hieratic and Demotic scripts are still sporadically attested some time longer - the latest Demotic text dates to the mid-fifth century ad - but there are no securely dated manuscripts after 250 ad, and most of the temple schools seem to have ceased to operate around this time. In terms of political history, large stretches of the period saw Egypt under repeated and very different types of foreign rule; Kushite c.720-665 bc with intermittent Assyrian invasions and partial control of the country during the final decade, Persian 525-404 and 342-332 bc, Macedonian and Ptolemaic 332-30 bc, and Roman from 30 bc onwards.

The bulk of the literary texts are written in the Hieratic and Demotic scripts (comprehensive surveys of the Demotic material in Depauw 1997, Hoffmann and Quack 2007; there are no comparable surveys of the Hieratic and Hieroglyphic material). The monumental Hieroglyphic script is mainly used for funerary papyri, and only one literary text is written in late cursive Hieratic (often called Abnormal Hieratic). While Hieroglyphic and Hieratic were scripts of great antiquity, Demotic only developed in the north around the mid-seventh century and spread south, replacing Hieratic as the official administrative and legal script. By the late fifth century its use had also been extended to narrative literature, and in the late Ptolemaic Period it further entered the domain of cultic and scientific literature. The gradually expanded use of Demotic seems to have been a natural development that took place at a different pace in various parts of the country. Thus, for instance, Demotic dominates the literature from the temple of Soknopaiou Nesos in the northern Fayum during the first and second centuries ad, while one third of the similar material from the contemporary Tebtunis temple library in the southern Fayum - sometimes copies of the very same texts - is still written in Hieratic.

The Classical language continues to appear in learned contexts, and the survival of narrative and wisdom literature in the Classical language on scribal tablets from the Saite period (cf. above) indicates that such material was still used for educational purposes. A Hieratic papyrus of perhaps slightly later date is remarkable in preserving a line-by-line translation of a Middle Egyptian text rendered into early Demotic grammar (Quack 1999a). However, the classical language and script continued to play a fundamental role in the cultic domain and on monuments, and there is some evidence as to how it was preserved and taught in the temples (Ryholt 2005a: 151-2).

In addition to the Egyptian scripts, a substantial amount of Egyptian literature exists in different types of Greek translation and adaption. Moreover, several ancient collections of literary texts include Egyptian and Greek material side-by-side, such as the Apollonius Archive, the Tebtunis temple library, the ostraca from the Narmouthis temple, and the Theban Magical Archive (cf. refs. below), and it is important to keep in mind that many Egyptians also knew Greek. Fragments of more than one thousand manuscripts inscribed with the Iliad and Odyssey have been found in Egypt, not least owing to the Greek education system, and it is quite probable that the Homeric poems were more widely read than any single piece of Egyptian narrative literature. For the purposes of the present chapter, however, Greek material which does not relate directly to Egyptian tradition will not be considered.