“Let your heart not sink! Follow your heart and your happiness. Do your things on earth as your heart commands! When that day of mourning comes to you, The weary-hearted hears not their mourning, Wailing saves no man from the pit!” Harper’s Song of Intef This is Cattle of Ra Audio Editions, where we delve into the textual sources of Ancient Egypt. In this case, the Ancient Egyptian Harper’s Songs: poetry written to mourn the deceased and invite the living to seize the day, with a genre name derived from the usual depiction of a blind harper on the tomb wall next to them, and the fact that they were, in fact, songs accompanied by a harp. One of the most common misconceptions about Ancient Egypt is the notion that they were “obsessed with death,” never enjoying life’s pleasures, looking down on their earthly existence, while remaining fixated on the afterlife, but - as always with Ancient Egyptian culture - the reality was a lot more complex. And it is through these Harper’s Songs that we are granted a rare and deeply personal glimpse into the inner cultural logic of the Ancient Egyptian, painting a far more nuanced image of their social discourse than we could ever glean from official inscriptions and monuments alone. While they frequently feature an ode to life and its fleeting beauty, with an outspoken carpe diem philosophy, they also harbor profound passages of anxiety and doubt. Spanning the entire history of Ancient Egypt, these Harper’s Songs turned into a startling and innovative genre in the Middle Kingdom, after the upheaval of the First Intermediate Period, when they became deeply skeptical and almost radical in their challenge to common mortuary beliefs, sparking fierce rebuttals in the New Kingdom versions, presenting a personal and unfiltered view on how to live life and the perceived imminence of death. Egyptologist and author of the seminal work on Ancient Egyptian literature Miriam Lichtheim argues that this was a genre that was not bound to ceremony and ritualistic revival (like the Book of the Dead and its necessary spells to overcome death) but a free, imaginative treatise on mortality itself that “can hold mutually incompatible answers about the afterlife and how to approach it,” In her introduction to these songs, she writes: “Carved on tomb walls and on mortuary stelae, Harper’s Songs are part of the mortuary repertoire, albeit a very special part. Their theme was death. But they were reflections on death, and not ritual texts required in the ceremonies of burial and revivification. Hence their authors were free to pursue the theme of death in an imaginative way. Their main approach was to sing a praise of death and of the tomb, and to reassure the owner of the tomb about his fate. But their freedom from ritual requirements produced an unexpected and startling innovation: a song that lamented the passing of life and urged enjoyment of life while it lasts! This song, the famous Harper’s Song from the Tomb of King Intef, went so far as to cast doubt on the reality of the afterlife and on the usefulness of tombs. Once this note of hedonism coupled with skepticism had been sounded, it continued to occupy the minds and to be reflected both in Harpers’ Songs and in other compositions — notably in the Dispute between a Man and His Ba, in which the ba voices precisely the same opinion.Songs and hymns were functional compositions, designed to serve in a particular setting. At the same time they could become literature in the narrow sense of writings transmitted on papyrus and appreciated as works of imaginative art. This was the fate of the Harper’s Song from the Tomb of King Intef, and of some of the hymns to gods and kings. In some cases, notably in the Hymn to the Nile, the literary character is so dominant that one may doubt whether it ever had a cultic function.” Miriam Lichtheim The most famous of these songs is a text from the tomb of Intef, and it contains the most pessimistic and anxious text about the Ancient Egyptian afterlife we have to date, going as far as to doubt the existence of eternal life and the usefulness of tombs.This Harper’s song of Intef is preserved in two New Kingdom copies: The Ramesside Papyrus Harris 500 (= P. British Museum 10060); and the tomb wall of Paatenemheb at Saqqara (now in Leiden), which dates from the reign of Amenhotep IV (better known as Akhenaten). The Saqqara version, which is incomplete, is written above the heads of a group of four musicians led by a blind harpist (The song’s introductory line states that it reproduces a song inscribed in the tomb of King Intef, a name that was borne by a number of kings of the Eleventh and of the Seventeenth Dynasties). Because both versions reproduce a genuinely Middle Egyptian text, scholars agree that an original text, carved in a royal tomb of the Middle Kingdom, existed. The Song from the Tomb of King Intef He is happy, this good prince! Death is a kindly fate. A generation passes, Another stays, Since the time of the ancestors. The gods who were before rest in their tombs. Blessed nobles, too, are buried in their tombs. (Yet) those who built tombs, Their places are gone, What has become of them? I have heard the words of Imhotep and Hardedef, Whose sayings are recited whole. What of their places? Their walls have crumbled, Their places are gone, As though they had never been! What made the Intef Song so startling and considered almost radical is its skepticism: the song openly questions the reality of the afterlife and the effectiveness of tomb-building to obtain immortality. In fact, his lines are so cynical and biting that they could almost be considered a satire, since he is mocking the sage Imhotep, who famously built the step pyramid, and then the father of Ancient Egyptian philosophy, Hardedef, who, in his then-famous instructions to his infant son from the Old Kingdom, advised people to build a stable home, marry wisely, and, crucially, invest deeply in their tombs. Hardedef famously wrote, “Prepare your place in the West... the house of death is for life!” He argued that a well-furnished tomb and a properly funded funerary priest were the only ways to guarantee eternal remembrance, and this song directly questions this most ancient of wisdoms, while also cleverly hinting at the fact that only his writing stood the test of time and made him immortal, not his tomb. It was this skepticism that injected a note of discord into a class of songs that had been designed to praise and reassure. In fact, nowhere is this dichotomy between official religious practice and actual personal experience more felt than in these early songs. The Harper’s Song continues: None comes from there, To tell of their state, To tell of their needs, To calm our hearts, Until we go where they have gone! Hence rejoice in your heart! Forgetfulness profits you Follow your heart as long as you live! Put myrrh on your head, Dress in fine linen, Anoint yourself with oils fit for a god. Heap up your joys, Let your heart not sink! Follow your heart and your happiness. Do your things on earth as your heart commands! When that day of mourning comes to you, The weary-hearted hears not their mourning, Wailing saves no man from the pit! Refrain (1): Make holiday, Refrain (2): Make holiday,Do not weary of it!Lo, none is allowed to take his goods with him,Lo, none who departs comes back again! The phrase “make holiday” ( ir hrw nfr), which the singer of the Intef Song addresses to the audience, was a popular figure of speech to express all sorts of forms of hedonistic enjoyments, and a term employed in situations of daily life as well as in reference to death and the afterlife. It is also important to note that funerary banquets were held in the cemeteries on feast days, so in a way the Harper’s Song was also speaking to the living. It is thus quite possible that Harper’s Songs were sung at such funerary banquets, as a memento mori and to remind the living to seize the day and make the most of life. However, the tension and incongruity betw… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit carlaberenice.substack.com/subscribe
