Here is some interesting information on ancient Egyptian Poems:

“Poetry is perhaps the greatest forgotten treasure of ancient Egypt,” said Richard Parkinson, an expert on ancient Egyptian poetry at London’s British Museum, home to the largest collection of Egyptian artifacts outside of Cairo.

Egyptian Poems

The earliest poetry in ancient Egypt was likely part of an oral tradition. Hymns, stories, and prayers were passed down from speaker to speaker. The ancient Egyptians left behind various love poems (Egyptian Poems) which relate the emotions felt all those thousands of years ago. And yet, they can be read as if they apply to us in the 21st century.

In poetry, and especially love poetry, the Egyptians and all their desires and fears come alive again. Although the Egyptians didn’t go in for roses and heart-shaped boxes of chocolates, they did have lots of love poetry. The love poems date back to the 13th-12th centuries BC but the sentiments that they express seem just as fresh today, verses filled with lust, longing, tenderness, and heartbreak.

An ancient Egyptian love poem-

O my beautiful one,

I wish I were part of your affairs, like a wife.

With your hand in mine

your love would be returned.

I implore my heart:

“If my true love stays away tonight,

I shall be like someone already

in the grave.”

Are you not my health and my life?

How joyful is your good health

for the heart that seeks you!

Here is an example of one of the beautiful Egyptian Poems, sung by a woman secretly longing for the man she is in love with:

‘My brother overwhelms my heart with his words,

he has made sickness seize hold of me.

see how my heart is torn by the memory of him,

love of him has stolen me.

Look what a senseless man he is

– but I am just like him.

He does not realize how I wish to embrace him,

or he would write to my mother.

Brother, yes! I am destined to be yours,

by the Gold Goddess of women.

Come to me, let your beauty be seen,

let father and mother be glad.

Call all my people together in one place,

let them shout out for you, brother.’

Arius of Alexandria continued the ancient Egyptian tradition of hymnals, popularising his theology by setting his ideas in verse. Not to be bested, Ephrem of Syria wrote ‘orthodox’ songs to counter the heretic, Arius.

In the west, Hilary of Poitiers and Ambrose of Milan followed suit.