


Produced by David Widger





AN EGYPTIAN PRINCESS, Complete

By Georg Ebers


Translated from the German by Eleanor Grove




PREFACE TO THE SECOND GERMAN EDITION

          Aut prodesse volunt ant delectare poetae,
          Aut simul et jucunda et idonea dicere vitae.
               Horat. De arte poetica v. 333.

It is now four years since this book first appeared before the public,
and I feel it my duty not to let a second edition go forth into the
world without a few words of accompaniment. It hardly seems necessary to
assure my readers that I have endeavored to earn for the following pages
the title of a "corrected edition." An author is the father of his book,
and what father could see his child preparing to set out on a new
and dangerous road, even if it were not for the first time, without
endeavoring to supply him with every good that it lay in his power to
bestow, and to free him from every fault or infirmity on which the world
could look unfavorably? The assurance therefore that I have repeatedly
bestowed the greatest possible care on the correction of my Egyptian
Princess seems to me superfluous, but at the same time I think it
advisable to mention briefly where and in what manner I have found
it necessary to make these emendations. The notes have been revised,
altered, and enriched with all those results of antiquarian research
(more especially in reference to the language and monuments of ancient
Egypt) which have come to our knowledge since the year 1864, and which
my limited space allowed me to lay before a general public. On the
alteration of the text itself I entered with caution, almost with
timidity; for during four years of constant effort as academical tutor,
investigator and writer in those severe regions of study which exclude
the free exercise of imagination, the poetical side of a man's nature
may forfeit much to the critical; and thus, by attempting to remodel my
tale entirely, I might have incurred the danger of removing it from the
more genial sphere of literary work to which it properly belongs. I have
therefore contented myself with a careful revision of the style, the
omission of lengthy passages which might have diminished the interest of
the story to general readers, the insertion of a few characteristic or
explanatory additions, and the alteration of the proper names. These
last I have written not in their Greek, but in their Latin forms, having
been assured by more than one fair reader that the names Ibykus and
Cyrus would have been greeted by them as old acquaintances, whereas the
"Ibykos" and "Kyros" of the first edition looked so strange and learned,
as to be quite discouraging. Where however the German k has the same
worth as the Roman c I have adopted it in preference. With respect
to the Egyptian names and those with which we have become acquainted
through the cuneiform inscriptions, I have chosen the forms most adapted
to our German modes of speech, and in the present edition have placed
those few explanations which seemed to me indispensable to the right
understanding of the text, at the foot of the page, instead of among the
less easily accessible notes at the end.

The fact that displeasure has been excited among men of letters by this
attempt to clothe the hardly-earned results of severer studies in an
imaginative form is even clearer to me now than when I first sent this
book before the public. In some points I agree with this judgment, but
that the act is kindly received, when a scholar does not scorn to render
the results of his investigations accessible to the largest number of
the educated class, in the form most generally interesting to them, is
proved by the rapid sale of the first large edition of this work. I
know at least of no better means than those I have chosen, by which to
instruct and suggest thought to an extended circle of readers. Those who
read learned books evince in so doing a taste for such studies; but it
may easily chance that the following pages, though taken up only for
amusement, may excite a desire for more information, and even gain a
disciple for the study of ancient history.

Considering our scanty knowledge of the domestic life of the Greeks and
Persians before the Persian war--of Egyptian manners we know more--even
the most severe scholar could scarcely dispense with the assistance
of his imagination, when attempting to describe private life among the
civilized nations of the sixth century before Christ. He would however
escape all danger of those anachronisms to which the author of such a