Literary Genres and Subjects
For technical works outside literature proper, see Medical papyri and Egyptian mathematics.Modern Egyptologists categorize Egyptian texts into genres, for example "laments/discourses" and narrative tales. The only genre of literature named as such by the ancient Egyptians was the "teaching" or sebayt genre. Parkinson states that the titles of a work, its opening statement, or key words found in the body of text should be used as indicators of its particular genre. Only the genre of "narrative tales" employed prose writing, yet many of the works of that genre, as well as those of other genres, were written in verse format. Most ancient Egyptian verses were written in couplet form, but sometimes triplets and quatrains were used.
Read more about this topic: Ancient Egyptian Literature
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