Publisher's Synopsis
This work constitutes the first academic monograph dedicated to the concept of isfet (disorder, chaos), based on an in-depth analysis of five major Egyptian literary texts, known as "pessimistic", namely the Dialogue Between a Man and his Ba, the Complaints of Khakheperraseneb, the Eloquent Peasant, the Prophecy of Neferti, and the Admonitions of Ipuwer. Describing the state of Egypt deprived of ma'at (the cosmic and social order), these texts are traditionally interpreted as a literary genre that emerged in the early Middle Kingdom to represent the political and social crisis that marked the First Intermediate Period. This study reconsiders the belonging of these texts to a genre defined as "pessimistic", and puts forward new hypotheses for their generic classification. Laura Parys provides a detailed translation of the five main texts, as well as a thematic, generic and lexical analysis, and compares them with other Egyptian textual sources that evoke situations of turmoil, aiming to define the conception of social chaos in the imagination of ancient Egypt.
