Against Eurocentrism: Decolonizing Eurocentric Literary Theories in the Ancient Egyptian and Arabic Poetics

Abstract

The paper offers literature review of the three suggested approaches that answer the question of ancient Egyptian meter. These theories reflect the constant contradictions between the dominant European Imperial languages of the 19 century (German - French - English). The paper also investigates the religious motivations that prompt Euro-American scholars to compare ancient Egyptian with Biblical texts. The rediscovered thematic affinities formed the main objective of these studies in order to restore historical hypothesizes that approve the legitimacy of several Biblical thoughts. Moving beyond the theoretical parameters of Eurocentric modernity, this paper argues that medieval Arabic literary criticism can be used as a foundation for understanding the literary nature of ancient Egyptian literary devices in order to recognize the various internal forces of the ancient Egyptian literary reproductions. Premodern Arabic poetics, represented in the theory of balāghah (literally ‘eloquence’ and roughly ‘poetics’), can offer the ideal path to take advantage of the linguistic affinities between the two languages in the realm of literary studies.

Keywords:

• Ancient Egyptian literary theories
• Literary Eurocentcrisim
• Post-Eurocentric Poetics
• Post-Eurocentric Comparative Literature
• Premodern Arabic Poetics

Acknowledgments

I want to thank the two HJC reviewers for their valuable and constructive criticism. I am thankful also to my colleagues who generously provided their insightful criticism on earlier drafts: Stephen Quirke (UCL) and Donald Reid (University of Washington). All translations of Arabic and ancient Egyptian texts are mine unless indicated otherwise. I dedicate this article to Ineke Sluiter (Leiden University). She offered me the confidence and support in a moment that transformed the way I approached the normalization of Eurocentric ways of thinking during my PhD studies (2011–2016). It all began with my participation in an international conference organized at UCL in 2014, titled “The Language of Persuasion”. I finished my presentation on how ancient Egyptian and Arabic poetics employ different persuasion strategies based on certain types of literary devices. I received a few interesting questions, but the last question was wrapped in sarcasm and irritation. A renowned professor based at the University of Oxford asked why I did not employ “the more scientific European terms” to describe both ancient Egyptian and Arabic literary cultures. I tried to answer, but my shivering answer fell on deaf ears, until the moment in which Ineke declared her full support to the idea that each culture generates its own literary terms and concepts and we should refrain from imposing Eurocentric terms on non-European cultures. Her support restored my full confidence and gave me a real hope that some European scholars can advocate these voiceless non-European cultures’ rights to be treated with respect and dignity, instead of automatically considering their own terms and concepts as primitive or unscientific. After this conference, I decided to generate a clear path for my post-Eurocentric methodology.

Notes

1 For more detailed information about when the modern world recognized the existence of AE literature after Champollion deciphered the AE language in 1822, see Schenkel (1996).

2 It seems that only German Egyptologists have adopted this metrical theory and applied it to several AE texts: (Hornung, 1967); (Barta, 1969); ( Plantikow-Münster, 1969); (Assmann, 1972);(Osing, 1983) which gave the impression that Fecht’s metrical theory became part of the analyzing tools of any AE text in the German literary school of Egyptology.

3 However, Jansen-Winklen’s article was not deep enough to reveal the literary differences between employing the usual pattern of adjective that follows its described noun (Hr nfr) and the studied construction (nfr Hr). Both constructions may occur in one verse to add a different semantic layer implied by this creative grammatical variations.

4 The reader can consult several sources to understand their early methodology: Barton, 1916, 558; Erman, 1924, 86; Simpson, 1926, 232.

5 See (Erman, 1924b; Humbert, 1929; Loretz, 1964; Shupak, 1993).

6 The term Afroasiatic is also known as Afrasian (Diakonoff, 1981), Hamito-Semitic, Semito-Hamitic. The biblical terms such as Hamitic, Semitic, and Cushitic led to the long use of Hamito-Semitic or Semito-Hamitic for the whole phylum. Nowadays, these terms are objectionable because of their mythological origins; thus a neutral geographic term “Afro-Asiatic” or “Afro-asiatic” was generated and came into usage. The old opposition of Semitic to a certain “Hamitic” unity (into which all the African members of the family were forced) was resolved in the 1950s by Greenberg. He argued for the equal status of four African branches beside the Egyptian: Berber, Chusgitic, Omotic, Chadic.

7 (Neb Ra Hymn to Amun, line 3)

Additional information

Funding

This work has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program under ERC-2017-STG Grant Agreement No 759346 and is part of the “Global Literary Theory” project at the University of Birmingham.