During the reigns of Ramses II and his immediate successors, from about 1300 BC to 1150 BC, a social class of well-educated royal scribes and temple craftsmen emerged in Ancient Egypt rivaling the traditional priesthood in cultural influence, if not power. In their hands a new genre of literature appeared: Secular love poetry depicting in hieratic script real flesh-and-blood men and women, expressing real emotions and speaking to one another with real human feelings for the first time. Unfortunately, this state of affairs was to last only as long as the Spring Revolutions of Ramses II and his immediate successors. Roughly 100 years.

The translations edited and presented in this fourth edition include both the original secular poems and additional religious love poetry nearly 4,500 years old. This addition, pushing the clock back to 2360 BC for the earliest poems, registers a seismic shift in the editors’ understanding of the Egyptian vision of love. We now see that drawing a sharp dividing line between secular and religious love poetry is pointless, Love poetry is love poetry.