I was reading a review today of Toby Wilkinson’s new book The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt where the reviewer mentioned “the failure of Egyptian writers to indulge in the kind of salacious detail that the Greeks and the Romans so relished.” While it is undoubtedly true that we have yet to find an Egyptian Suetonius or Tacitus, we can’t say that that such a person never existed.
Unfortunately, the written source material for ancient Egypt is fragmentary at best and the best preserved texts are those carved on monuments. As a result, we tend to have a lot of bland, official pronouncements about the glories of the king. But that doesn’t mean that more irreverent works didn’t exist; it just means that they’re less likely to have survived since they would’ve been written on papyrus.
We already have some tantalizing hints of scurrilous stories. Papyrus Westcar makes Khufu look like a jerk, while the tale of Pepy and General Sasenet suggests that the two of them were lovers. Demotic literature is even more irreverent: Thutmose III has his rear end whipped by magical figures sent from Nubia and Amasis is portrayed as a drunk. The tradition of writing down scandalous things about one’s superiors is probably as old as writing itself and I don’t think we should assume that the Egyptians were any more reticent about these things than anybody else.
As for Wilkinson’s book, I look forward to reading it, if only because I’m curious to see how he backs up some of his assertions. In particular, I wonder how he supports his claim that there was “close surveillance” of the populace in pharaonic Egypt. He’s a good scholar, so I’m sure it’ll be an interesting read.
Codex Lochianus 