Wikipedia:Today's featured article/June 9, 2011

Ancient Egyptian literature was written in the Egyptian language from Ancient Egypt's pharaonic period until the end of Roman domination. Along with Sumerian literature, it is considered the world's earliest literature. Writing in Ancient Egypt first appeared in the late 4th millennium BC. By the Old Kingdom, literary works included funerary texts, epistles and letters, religious hymns and poems, and commemorative autobiographical texts. It was not until the early Middle Kingdom that a narrative Egyptian literature was created. Middle Egyptian, the spoken language of the Middle Kingdom, became a classical language during the New Kingdom, when the vernacular language known as Late Egyptian first appeared in writing. Scribes of the New Kingdom canonized and copied many literary texts written in Middle Egyptian, which remained the language used for oral readings of sacred hieroglyphic texts. Ancient Egyptian literature has been preserved on a wide variety of media, including papyrus scrolls and packets, limestone or ceramic ostraca, wooden writing boards, monumental stone edifices and coffins. Hidden caches of literature, buried for thousands of years, have been discovered in settlements on the dry desert margins of Egyptian civilization. (more...)