King Akhenaten was a ruler circa 1350 B.C. who oversaw the construction of structures at Karnak, but he was also a poet. His Hymn to the Sun is a religious poem, as the ancient Egyptians considered the Sun to be a visible form of God. Part of his legacy is in forcing a shift from polytheistic religious modes to monotheism. In his poetry, he praises his God in a monotheistic fashion, beginning the poem, "Let your holy Light shine from the height of heaven, / O living Aton, / source of all life!" He continues in the seventh stanza with, "O sole God, / beside whom is no other!"
The New Kingdom era of ancient Egypt produced many love poems. These poems do express the high emotion of love, but also reflect what mundane life was like in this period. In one untitled poem, the narrator discusses his lover's love in terms of fire and the longing in terms of a hawk hunting for food, "For heaven makes your love / Like the advance of flames in straw, / And its longing like the downward swoop of a hawk." Not only is the universal feeling of love conveyed, but the power of nature is shown to be important to the author.
Archaeologists have found poetry from Deir el-Medina, a village for tomb builders during the New Kingdom era of Egyptian history. It is thought that the workers themselves may have been literate and contributed to the poetry. The very same artisans who built tombs for Ramses II and Tutankhamun may have spent their evenings writing or singing poetry. One feature of their poetry was the use of everyday activities as metaphors for love. Here, in "The Crossing," the writer draws a parallel between fishing and his love, "I'll go down to the water with you, / and come out to you carrying a red fish, / which is just right in my fingers."
Egyptian poetry most closely reflects compositions from the ancient Hebrews in the use of parallelism and rhythm. The Egyptian verse has been compared to the Torah's Book of Psalms and the Song of Solomon. So many of the poems are secular love poems, a fact which continues to surprise many. The poems, as they've been translated, are quite direct and their use of repetition and metaphor make them quite familiar and accessible to modern audiences.