From reading Hutto’s “Ancient Egyptian Rhetoric from the Old and Middle Kingdoms”, I learned about rhetoric from an Egyptian point of view. I learned about the general rules, how women in particular used rhetoric, and how most Egyptian leaders used rhetoric. I’ve never took much thought into how rhetoric was used in ancient Egypt until reading this article. Now, I feel more educated and hope to use what I’ve learned in the future. In this blog, I’ll discuss the three main things I observed from reading Hutto’s article.
There are were a set of general rules that ancient Egyptians considered important when it came to rhetoric. They believed in reticence, reinforcing society, correctly repeating messages sent by a superior, modesty, and truth. I think these rules were common for most ancient civilizations. The reason why I say some and not all is because of the more confrontational nature of other ancient civilizations (Ex: Vikings). When it came to using rhetoric, the ancient Egyptians followed several general rules.
Ancient Egyptian women didn’t follow the rules of rhetoric. Many were not trained in the schools where rules of rhetoric would likely have been taught. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by this since they are many ancient customs that don’t entitle women to the same privileges as men. I just didn’t know that Egypt was one of them until now. Due to a disadvantage in education, a lot of ancient Egyptian women used rhetoric differently than expected.
Most of the leaders of Ancient Egypt used rhetoric to exalt themselves. It was common for pharaohs such as Hatshepsut to engage in self aggrandizement when making royal proclamations. This doesn’t shock me at all. Most leaders from the ancient times up to the present view themselves highly. Boosting pride was one of main reasons why ancient leaders utilized rhetoric.
I learned about rhetoric from an Egyptian standpoint from reading Hutto’s “Ancient Egyptian Rhetoric from the Old and Middle Kingdoms”. How most Egyptian leaders used rhetoric, how women particularly used rhetoric, and the general rules for rhetoric, were the three main things I learned. Before reading this article, I was ignorant to all the details considering rhetoric that involved ancient Egypt. Now that I’m aware of those details, I’ll never look at ancient Egypt the same ever again. This article helped me realize that rhetoric just like any other writing element has a history spanning from the ancient times to the present time.
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