When did Egyptian narrative literature emerge? The standard answer in Egyptology has been: around 2000 BC. Yet just how fragmentary our knowledge is, and how quickly established theories are overturned by new discoveries during excavations, is demonstrated in his lecture by Mohamed Ismail Khaled, who discusses blocks bearing a long hieroglyphic inscription that he excavated and which dates from around 2490 to 2475 BC. It is the oldest narrative text from Egypt discovered to date.
© cross-cultural philology