(Im)politeness in Ancient Egypt

Norms, Wit, and Rudeness in Texts from Pharaonic Times through Late Antiquity

Maria Victoria Almansa-Villatoro, Aurore Motte (Herausgeber)

Buch | Hardcover

342 Seiten

2025
Brill (Verlag)
978-90-04-72422-8 (ISBN)

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This volume is the first book-length study of (im)politeness research on ancient Egyptian texts covering all stages of the language as well as hieroglyphic, hieratic, demotic, and Coptic scripts.

(Im)politeness in Ancient Egypt is the first book-length study of (im)politeness in ancient Egyptian texts. Leading experts in their respective corpora examine a range of textual sources spanning approximately 2,000 years, using the latest frameworks for analyzing language in usage. This edited volume asks how ancient Egyptians adapted and modified their language to persuade, complain, or mock, and how they assessed the risks and benefits of communicating with those above or below them in the social hierarchy. The papers explore whether ancient Egyptians used politeness freely and strategically, or were constrained by mandatory social rules. The documents presented, translated, and analyzed in this book include personal letters, ritual utterances, fictional stories, dialogue captions in tomb scenes, and messages to dead relatives.

M. Victoria Almansa-Villatoro, Ph.D. (2022), Brown University, is Assistant Professor of Egyptology at Yale University. She has published on Egyptian language, society, and religion and is co-editor of Ancient Egyptian and Afroasiatic: Rethinking the Origins (Eisenbrauns, 2023). Aurore Motte, Ph.D. (2018), University of Liège, is a postdoctoral researcher of the F.R.S.-FNRS (Belgium). She has published on ancient Egyptian language, literature, and paratext and co-edited Looking Beyond the Text: New Approaches to Scribal Culture and Practices in Ancient Egypt (Brill, 2025).

Preface

List of Figures and Tables

Notes on Contributors and Editors

Ancient Egyptian Politeness throughout the Ages

Approaches, Questions, and Results

M. Victoria Almansa-Villatoro and Aurore Motte

1 The Study of Politeness in Ancient Languages—Methodological Notes

Dániel Z. Kádár and Juliane House

2 J.nḏ-ḥr.k “Protect your face!”: Addressing Politeness in the Pyramid Texts

Brendan Hainline

3 Solidarity Politeness in Old Kingdom Speech Captions

Aurore Motte

4 Ritual, (Im‑)politeness, and Social Order in the Old Kingdom and First Intermediate Period Letters to the Dead in Comparison with Letters to the Living

M. Victoria Almansa-Villatoro

5 Phraseology and Motivation in Heqanakht’s Letters

James P. Allen

6 (Im)polite Behaviors in Ancient Egyptian Fictional Stories

Nikolaos Lazaridis

7 Exploring Third-Party (Im)politeness in the Late Ramesside Letters

Kim Ridealgh

8 (Im)politeness, Irony and Hierarchical Status: Pragmatic Anchorage of the Ancient Egyptian Fictional Narrative

Gaëlle Chantrain

9 L’impolitesse comme source de divertissement et d’éducation: l’exemple de la Lettre satirique

Nathalie Sojic

10 Appearance and Reality in Setne’s Dialogue with “Pharaoh” in First Setne 5.31–35

Joseph Cross

11 Politeness and Impoliteness in Coptic Documents: The Correspondence of the Monk Frange in 8th Century Thebes

Jennifer Cromwell and Alain Delattre

Index

Erscheinungsdatum	04.10.2025
Reihe/Serie	Studies in Pragmatics ; 27
Verlagsort	Leiden
Sprache	englisch
Maße	155 x 235 mm
Gewicht	696 g
Themenwelt	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Vor- und Frühgeschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Sprachwissenschaft
ISBN-10	90-04-72422-2 / 9004724222
ISBN-13	978-90-04-72422-8 / 9789004724228
Zustand	Neuware