Emotions in ancient Egypt—An overview

The aim of the article is to present essential aspects of five emotions (joy, fear, love, sadness, anger) on the basis of written sources from ancient Egypt. Through selective analyses of the Egyptian emotion vocabulary, including metaphors and descriptions of physical states and reactions, some elementary concepts will be explained. In addition, it is a concern to point out some of the difficulties that can be associated with the investigation of emotions in ancient Egyptian texts. Therefore, brief references are given to current Egyptological studies that have been devoted to the topic adopting new methods.