"... The form basic to all the poems is the direct first-person speech of either a young man or a young woman. It is a monologue addressed to the speaker’s own heart. In the seven stanzas of the first Chester Beatty cycle there is a regular alternation of male and female speakers. The other collections do not have this regularity. The lovers refer to each other as “brother” and “sister,” these words being the normal terms of endearment in ancient Egyptian usage. Though sophisticated in the context of their own times, the poems have the conceptual simplicity and the terseness of language that are the hallmarks of ancient Egyptian literature. That simplicity and terseness must be retained in the translations. Some recent renderings of Egyptian love poems exhibit a typically modern lush and mannered eroticism which is quite alien to the ancient Egyptian ..."