Polite like an Egyptian? Case Studies of Politeness in the Late Ramesside Letters

Abstract

The Late Ramesside Letters, a corpus of over 70 personal communications written in Late Egyptian, form one of the most complete letter collections from ancient Egypt (c. 1099–1069 BCE). A key feature of ancient Egyptian letter writing is the adherence to the social positions of, and relationships between, the interlocutors, allowing scholars to reconstruct the hierarchical network of individuals directly and indirectly included in the corpus. From this understanding, how can modern scholars discern what was considered to be ‘polite’ communicative behaviour within these relationships and how can developments in historical politeness help us do this? This article will explore three case studies surrounding different aspects of politeness research: first-order politeness, facework, and discernment politeness in order to explore the phenomenon of ‘politeness’ in Late Egyptian and reflect on the suitability of current politeness frameworks for the analysis of the Late Ramesside Letters.