Research Article: Ancient Egypt 2675-332 B.c.e.: Theater

Though Egyptologists generally agree that some Egyptian texts were dramatic, there is little agreement on which texts fall into this category. The most commonly identified drama is the Dramatic Ramesseum Papyrus, but there are other texts thought by some Egyptologists to constitute dramas, including the Shabaka Stone, parts of the Coffin Texts, parts of the Book of the Dead, the Metternich Stele, the Papyrus Bremner-Rhind, the Louvre Papyrus 3129, and the Horus Myth carved on the walls of the Edfu temple. The lack of agreement on which texts constitute drama leads to difficulties in studying drama as a distinct class of text. The following reviews the evidence that these texts represent dialogue and stage directions for dramatic presentations.

The Dramatic Ramesseum Papyrus received its name from its first editor, Kurt Sethe, the distinguished German Egyptologist who worked in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The English archaeologist James Edward Quibell...
(read more)