Selection of Literature extracts in School Manuals

Abstract

The questions raised already by o. guéraud and P. Jouguet are still tantalizing contemporary scholars. This paper attempts to discuss them once again. It focuses on guessing the criteria that lead to teaching in a classroom a particular selection of literature extracts and on whether the compilers of school manuals had immediate access to complete literary works. The paper concludes that the criteria by which the extracts were chosen for educational purposes were very precise and persistant throughout antiquity. It also concludes that it is highly unlikely that students and teachers in egypt used anthologies and not whole works as their only source of literary knowledge, since it cannot be proven that there was some kind of "archetype" anthology, from which all school texts and quotations where drawn.