Sir Alan Gardiner's History of Egypt Analytical Essay by Top Papers

The paper looks at the ancient text known as the admonitions of ipuwer and outlines why this venerable bit of Egyptian literature cannot properly be viewed as an accurate historical document. Specifically, the paper looks at Miriam Lichtheim's contemptuous dismissal of Sir Alan Gardiner's view that the work is somehow both a "historical romance" and also an accurate reflection of what took place. The paper highlights the main ideas in Lichtheim's argument and then briefly compares some genuinely historical works with the aforementioned admonitions and notes how, to the extent Lichtheim is right about the literary and not historic nature of the admonitions, Sir Alan Gardiner's scholarship into the world of Middle Kingdom Egypt may be profoundly compromised.