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The Eloquent Peasant is currently the longest literary text to survive complete from the Middle Kingdom of Egypt. It is one of the masterpieces of Middle Egyptian literature, containing grandiose language and abounding in metaphors.
The Eloquent Peasant concerns the political, economic, religious and social aspects of the Middle Kingdom. It is an outstanding work, reflecting the magnificent literary achievement of ancient Egyptians. This text provides us most important materials for the study of ancient Egyptian society, and is of particular academic value in Egyptology.
Although this text has been studied by a large number of western Egyptologists, a comprehensive study has not yet been previously undertaken in China. This present study involves a thorough analysis of this text, by consulting works of modern western scholars, in order to fill in the gap in China.
The chapters are arranged as follows:
Chapter One includes firstly the transliteration and the Chinese translation of the text by using the international latest orthography of ancient Egyptian,secondly the semiotic analysis on Egyptian hieroglyphs by adopting the Chinese traditional theory of Bushou , in comparison with ancient Chinese characters, and thirdly a terminology is also provided.
Chapter Two gives the analysis of the linguistic techniques, the characters,and the stylistics of the text both from western and Chinese perspectives.
Chapter Three deals with the background of the law, the authority of the law, the procedure of the law, and the duty of judges as far as these are reflected in this text.
Chapter Four provides an explanation for the dating of the text, and the political, economic and religious background of this text.
The book concludes that The Eloquent Peasant praises the pursuit of seeking truth and upholding justice by ancient Egyptians, and strongly condemns dark aspects of ancient Egyptian society. The text is, to some extent,also a eulogy to the ruling class represented by the ancient Egyptian king, who upheld truth and defended justice. The ancient Egyptians’ expectation of eliminating corruption as well as seeking truth and upholding justice still has a very instructive meaning for us today.