"THE welcome which has been accorded to the volumes of this Series, and the fact that some of them have passed into second and third editions, suggest that these little books have been found useful by beginners in Egyptology and others. Hitherto the object of them has been to supply information about the Religion, Magic,
Language, and History of the ancient Egyptians, and to provide editions of the original texts from which such information was derived. There are, however, many branches of Egyptology which need treatment in a similar manner in this Series, and it has been suggested in many quarters that the time has now arrived when the
publication of a series of groups of texts illustrating EGYPTIAN LITERATURE in general might well be begun. Seeing that nothing is known about the authors of Egyptian works, not even their names, it is impossible to write a History of Egyptian Literature in the ordinary sense of the word. The only thing to be done is to print the

actual works in the best and most complete form possible, with translations, and then to put them in the hands of the reader and leave them to his judgment."

"这套丛书的各卷受到欢迎，而且其中一些已经进入第二版和第三版，这表明这些小书被埃及学的初学者和其他人发现是有用的。迄今为止，这些书的目标是提供有关宗教、魔法、语言和古埃及历史的信息。

语言和古埃及历史的信息，并提供这些信息所来自的原始文本的版本。然而，埃及学的许多分支都需要在这套丛书中以类似的方式进行处理，而且许多方面都建议现在已经到了出版一系列文本的时候了。

许多人建议，现在已经到了可以开始出版一系列说明埃及文学的文本的时候了。由于对埃及作品的作者一无所知，甚至连他们的名字都不知道，因此不可能写一部普通意义上的埃及文学史。唯一要做的就是将这些作品以最好和最完整的形式印刷出来。

尽可能以最佳和最完整的形式印刷实际作品，并附上译文，然后把它们放在读者手中，让他们自己判断。