Now that you have had a chance to read some Egyptian poetry, I am curious about what you found

surprising and not so surprising about those ancient poems. Please answer one of the following before midnight Thursday. (You do not need to reply to a classmate this week.) Then answer the question about the Old Testament instead of replying to a classmate by midnight Monday. 1. Can you find contemporary poetry, song lyrics, or religious verses that are similar to one of these poems? Please post a sample of contemporary verse (song lyrics are fine) that involves similar meaning and language. and compare the two. Explain their similarities and differences. 2. Select a poem from the Egyptian collection and answer the following questions in order: Who is the speaker? What is the topic? What is the tone? What is the theme?) Then select a few lines and demonstrate how those words convey the theme of the poem, addressing connotation (the flavor or associated meaning of words) as well as denotation, or dictionary meaning. (For example, "slender" and "skinny" mean "slim" but in very different ways.) Old Testament: Compare the vision of creation given in the Egyptian poetry assigned with that given in Genesis: How are they similar and how are they different?

In Akhenatens Hymn to the Sun, Akhenaten is the speaker. Akhenatens topic is about the sun Aten and how he is the son of Aten. There in the Sun, you reach to the farthest of those/you would gather in your Son, (83) through capitalizing the words Sun and Son, we understand the meaning of those words is written with importance, and that the topic will be Aten. His tone is full of admiration, exaltation, praise, thanking and paying homage to his God of gods Aten: the sun disk God. The theme of Hymn to the Sun is an ode to the god who is above all gods. Through rays of the fair, all knowing, protecting sun god (Aten) all life is created and flourishes. If there were no sun, then all life on earth would have diminished. When you sink to rest below the western horizon, /earth lies in darkness like death (83) Once you rose into shining, they lived, / when you sink to rest they shall die (86) The key words are sink, rest, lies, darkness, and death with the connotation referring to the sun god who is not there, earth then would be covered in darkness, and everything would cease to exist. Also, there is a meaning that when the sun rises you would wake up and when the sun descends, you go to sleep. Farming in the dark is nearly impossible without light, so Egyptians had to use every precious second of the sun to their advantage.

Old Testament:

The creation stories in Egyptian poetry and the Old Testament are similar and different: Egyptians were Polytheistic, while the Jews were monotheistic, all though there is more than one God; one god only presides over the earth. Egypt Ex. He is the God the Creator, self-created, the Holy; / all other gods came after; (88) Jewish Ex. Now that the human has become like one of us...( God is speaking)(100) How the world got created in both stories is very similar. The Old Testament gives a deeper story and a background on everything such as the first seven days of creation detailed, while the Egyptian poetry does not. Egypt Ex. unknown his mode of inflowingwith Himself he began the world. (88) But how? Did he create the man or did the other Gods, which he created after himself, create the man? In Egyptian poetry, things were just there with no reason why they were put there. In the Old Testament, God had a reason for putting everything on earth.