So there is a podcast happening in the house, Monsieur Big Bang’s conversations about anthropology with John Lehr. As a result, copious packages of books have been delivered on every conceivable topic. I asked how many books were needed per podcast. I was told ten. (!)
For an upcoming show on contraceptives, the following book arrived, (and of course I plucked it out of the stack to peruse), Sacred Sexuality in Ancient Egypt, The Erotic Secrets of the Forbidden Papyrus. And I didn’t grab it just for the racy drawings (but there it did not disappoint). There are poems in this thing, specifically in a chapter called “Love, Eroticism, and Sexuality in Literature.”
I was hoping the poems would be as risqué as the drawings.
They weren’t.
Apparently “the people of the Nile had a great love of writing” and they wrote on everything: rocks inscriptions, leather, plaster-coated wooden tablets (which were erasable like white boards), earthenware vessels. And apparently they loved to make sexual innuendos and saucy insults (aww, they’re just like us). They even swore and said obscene things. For example, a common insult to a man was someone with his “testicles far away.” (Things never change.) Another ancient insult to women (especially older ones) was to call them an “old tube.” (Oy my! That is offensive!)
Anyway, you’d think some of that might be found in the poetry included in the book?
Alas, no.
Here are some samples (and it’s handy to know these Ancient Egyptians called their beloveds brother and sister):
The One, the “sister” who has no equal,
More beautiful than all the rest,
To look on her is to see the star that rises
At the beginning of a good year.
She of the radiant perfection,
Of the resplendent complexion,
She who gazes from such lovely eyes.
Sweet are her likes when she speaks:
She never says a word too many.
She of the delicate long neck over breasts in full bloom.
Her hair is veritable lapis lazuli.
Her arms surpass any gold
And her fingers are like lotus buds.
She whose back is so lithesome, her waist is so narrow,
And whose beauty her hips still stress.
Her bearing turns the head of every man who sees her
Happy is the man who embraces her….
I mean, okay, maybe this was erotic at the time, to labor over the idea of a woman “who says not a word too many.” (Sigh.) Myself, I love the word veritable, but it’s not very sexy.
Now if you want to explore the misery of love, there’s plenty to offer here: “an illness has taken over me,” nothing can cure me, I can no longer “walk like everyone else,” “my reason is troubled,” “your love turns me upside down. I do not know how to let it go,” “I am the servant…the captive of the beloved…she gives me no water,” and the very dejected “I no longer put on my shawl, I no longer make up my eyes. I no longer even perfume myself.”
There’s also joy, elation, exultation. salvation in some of the poems. But not an actual lot of body parts.
We get close with lines like this, “It is my desire to come down and bathe in your presence…” but there are likely many encoded provocations, like one verse about a man who braves crocodiles in a river to get to his lover on the far bank: “The river could flood my body/…a crocodile lies in wait on the banks/ [but] going down into the water, I wish to cross over through the waves/by showing great courage in the canal.”
Yes, one must take courage in the canal for sure.
And here we go:
my seeds are like her teeth
my fruits are like her breasts…
I remain constant in all seasons:
when the “sister” acts with the “brother”!…
While they are intoxicated upon wines and liquors,
And liberally sprinkled with oil and balm….
Though I still stand upright, shedding my flowers,
Those of next year are (already) in me.
I am the first of my companions,
[but] I have been treated like the second!
In future, if they again begin to act this way
I will not keep my silence on their behalf!
At least we get some booze and lubrication in there. And the last poem in the chapter is allegedly full of metaphors and innuendos whose meaning the author surmises we may culturally miss (err…not really though):
You must present yourself at the house of your “sister”
alone, with no one else.
Go up to her door…
It is up to you to master her lock…
Like one unlocks a reception room.
How splendid is her pergola!
She is provided with song and dance,
wines and beers of ceremony are beneath her shadow,
while the colonnade is open to the breeze.
It is through the wind that the sky displays itself,
it will bring her aroma [that of the “sister”];
her perfume spreads, intoxicating those who breathe it.
It is up to you to agitate your “sister’s” senses,
and bring them to a pinnacle during the night!
Then she will say to you: “Take me in your arms?
Dawn will find us in the same position.”
It is the Golden One who has presently appointed her for you,
so that you may put the finishing touches upon your life.
Well, we may have different ideas about what a reception room is, and I’ve never heard them called pergolas and colonades before. But architectural metaphors why not?
The whole chapter ends with this sentence, “With this delightful and poetic evocation of the first night of love for the young couple, we will close the shutter on the literature of pharonic Egypt.”
Those funny phallic pharonics.
