These are among the oldest love songs in the world, and they still speak with a living human voice. In the cities and riverbanks of Egypt's New Kingdom, more than three thousand years ago, lovers sang of the cat by the door, the pomegranate in the garden, the scent of the beloved's hair, and the flooding Nile that carried the heart away. Anonymous scribes wrote the songs down on papyrus and limestone, and the fragile scraps that survive let us overhear the joy, longing, jealousy, quarrels, and delight of an entire ancient world. This edition gathers the surviving collections—the Seven Wishes, the Songs of the Orchard, the Fragrance Songs, and more—in clear, warm, present-day English that keeps faith with the original's imagery and spirit. Here, human desire is written as a kind of worship: the beloved is a garden, a gazelle, a festival of the gods. Part of The World Scriptures Library.