This course focuses on the analysis of Ancient Egyptian literary texts from a variety of different genres. We will read examples of instructional and wisdom literature, poetry, literary narratives, and mythical tales. Issues such as how to best define terms like “literature” or “genre” for such an ancient culture will be discussed, and we will try to trace the development of literary texts in pharaonic Egypt–from the earliest attestations of coherent prose in the tombs of the Egyptian Old Kingdom (around 2500 BCE), via the full-blown Late Egyptian narratives of the Ramesside Period (around 1200 BCE), to instances of reiterations of the older genres in the Late and Ptolemaic Periods (to about 300 BCE). No knowledge of Ancient Egyptian is required; all texts will be read in translation