Harper's Songs

Harper's Songs are ancient Egyptian texts that originated in tomb inscriptions of the Middle Kingdom (but found on papyrus texts until the Papyrus Harris 500 of the New Kingdom) which in the main praise life after death and were often used in funerary contexts. These songs display varying degrees of hope in an afterlife that range from the skeptical through to the more traditional expressions of confidence. These texts are accompanied by drawings of blind harpists and are therefore thought to have been sung. Thematically they have been compared with The Immortality of Writers in their expression of rational skepticism.

The distinction between songs, hymns and poetry in Ancient Egyptian texts is not always clear. The convention is to treat as songs those poetic texts which are depicted with musical instruments. If the songs are seen to have a clear connection with temple cults and festivals then they are commonly described as hymns. Poetic texts which are found in some tombs which are shown with scenes of labor are compared with songs sung by Egyptian laborers in the modern era and are also therefore classified as songs. Other songs relate to the cult of the dead and are nearly always depicted with harps from which the title "Harper's Songs" is derived. Since the songs are reflections on death, rather than being part of the rituals associated with burial, freer expression of thoughts is encountered in these texts. Songs sought to reassure the owner of the tomb about his fate after death by way of praise. The greater freedom, in the case Harper's Song from the Tomb of King Intef, even went so far as to doubt the reality of an afterlife, lamenting death and advising that life should be enjoyed whilst it could.Miriam Lichtheim viewed this as introducing a more skeptical strand of thought which would be reflected in works such as the Dispute between a Man and His Ba and other Harper's Songs.

The short song from the funerary stela of Iki is depicted with the deceased sitting at an offering table with his wife and the rotund harpist Neferhotep sitting in front of them:

O tomb, you were built for festivity,
You were founded for happiness!

The stela of Nebankh from Abydos contains a Harper's Song with the deceased shown seated at the offering table with the harpist squatting in front of him:

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