It Was All Said 4000 Years Ago

May 2, 2008

Preparing for my Ancient Egyptian Religion course I was struck by the opening paragraph of the Lamentations of Khakheperre-Sonbe from Middle Kingdom Egypt:

Would that I had unknown speeches, erudite phrases in new language which has not yet been used, free from the usual repetitions, not the phrases of past speech which our forefathers spoke... For indeed whatever has been said has been repeated, while what has (once) been said has been said. There should be no boasting about the literature of the men of former times or what their descendents discovered! [212]

It struck me as odd that at the dawn of literary production there is already the complaint that everything worth saying has already been said. This is echoed over 1000 years later by the writer of Ecclesiastes when he notes: "There is nothing new under the sun."