La Poesie amoureuse de l'Egypte ancienne: Recherches sur un genre litteraire au Nouvel Empire.

• Author: Troy, Lana
• Position: Review

By BERNARD MATHIEU. Bibliotheque d'etude, vol. 115. Cairo: INSTITUT FRANCAIS D'ARCHEOLOGIE ORIENTALE, 1996. Pp. viii + 267, 21 illustrations, 29 plates.

Bernard Mathieu began his investigation of ancient Egyptian love poetry with an article setting out proof for a distiche verse structure ("Etudes de metrique egyptienne, I: Le distiche heptametrique dans les chants d'amour," Revue d'Egyptologie 39 [1988]: 63-82). Using this as background, Mathieu presents a holistic reading of this group of texts, with the goal of defining it as a formal genre within Egyptian literature. His is a quantitative approach: he carefully breaks down his study into well-defined topics, taking the reader through a coherent and convincing characterization of the attributes of the genre.

The first half ("Traductions et notes philologiques," pp. 19-125) is, in itself, sufficient to recommend the book for purchase. After a discussion of the basic sources, totaling sixty-four poems, the texts are presented with extensive bibliographies of editions and translations. A brief commentary on themes introduces the translation of each group of poems. Mathieu's translations are elegantly academic, with an emphasis on his stringent reading of the structure of the poetry. With their unusually faithful rendering of the Egyptian, these translations function well as an aid to the poetics of the original. The philological discussion, including complete transliterations, follows as notes. Facsimiles from the original publications are included as plates at the end of the book.

The second part of the book ("Analyse du genre," pp. 129-248) outlines the properties of the genre. Mathieu chooses three levels of analysis: constituants modaux, formels, and thematiques. He begins his "analyse modale" (pp. 133-49) by categorizing the poems as "imitation dramatique." Although touching on a number of subjects such as the conditions of performance, emphasis is placed on the identification of the function of the different players. Three different roles are used for analysis: speaker (in narrative and dialogue), the one spoken to, and the one spoken about. The distribution of these roles is distinctive, Mathieu noting that while the girl addresses the boy, the boy speaks of, but not to, the girl. This is the first of a number of results that points to a masculine perspective in the poems.

The thematic analysis of the poem (pp. 151-88) begins by describing the analytic units in order of complexity...