A World Upturned

Abstract

The Dialogue of Ipuwer and the Lord of All is one of the major works from the golden age of Egyptian literature, the Middle Kingdom (c. 1980–1630 bc). The poem provides one of the most searching explorations of human motivation and divine justice to survive from ancient Egypt, and its stark pessimism questions many of the core ideologies that underpinned the Egyptian state and monarchy. It begins with a series of laments portraying an Egypt overwhelmed by chaos and destruction, and develops into an examination of why these disasters should happen, and who bears responsibility for them: the gods, the king, or humanity. This volume provides the first full literary analysis of this poem for a century. It provides a detailed study of questions such as: its date of composition; its historicity; the identity of its protagonists and setting; its reception history within Egyptian culture; and whether it really is a unified literary composition, or a redacted collection of texts of heterogenous origin.

The Late Period Stela of the God’s Father Horenpe from the Manchester Museum

“…However, the addition of a second irp with the M2 plant determinative is more unusual. The reading is uncertain, but it may either be a highly corrupted spelling of rnp.wt 15 or, alternatively, a simplified writing of irp 'grapevine'. 16 Another possibility is that irp is simply a phonetic spelling of the name of a plant type -an irp(w)-plant -as suggested by Gaber 17 based on an inscription from the temple of Kalabsha (irp irtt SdH smw irp(w) snTr xt nbt nfrt wabt nDm bnr).…”

On the myth of the Edwin Smith papyrus: is it magic or science?

“…This is mirrored in part in the so-called "lamentation literature" in which the misadventures of a non-functioning state are described and the missing "order of the world" (see below) is lamented. In "The Lamentations of Ipuwer," the Pharaoh as the major representative of this order is obviously reproached for not fulfilling his duties in this respect [29]. One major aspect of the governmental medical care was simply to keep the "system" running.…”