Egyptian Love Lyrics | Ancient World Literature Lesson & Activity for 9-10 ELA

Did the Ancient Egyptians scout out lovers on the shores of the Nile River? Did women wear cosmetics? Was love-sickness a thing? Surprisingly, these questions are answered in poetry written during the New Kingdom period (which lasted 1539 to 1075 B.C.E.).

This resource includes the following features:
Essential Question: Written more than three thousand years ago in Egypt, why do the New Kingdom Love Lyrics still manage to have relevance and newness for contemporary readers?

• Available as a PDF and Google Workspace
• 1 Notes for the Teacher
  • Provides a context for teaching the poems as supplementary to a unit on Ancient Egypt, or in tandem with “The Great Hymn to the Aten”!
• 1 Lesson Plan and Pacing Calendar
  • Provides learning objectives
  • Provides useful frontloaded vocabulary
  • Provides teacher’s script and best practices
  • Designed as a two-day lesson, plus extension activities
• 1 Google Form Assessment
  • Useful for an end-of-the-lesson assessment. Or, use as a pre-assessment or backward planning tool.
  • Bonus — Also includes a 5-Question Pre-Assessment on Easel!
• New Kingdom Love Lyrics: Informational Text
  • Provides useful background knowledge to the discovery of the lyrics and their translation from Egyptian hieratic script
  • Excerpt from public domain text — New Light on Ancient Egypt by Gaston Maspero (1908)
• Selected New Kingdom Love Lyrics
  • “The Unsuccessful Bird-Catcher”
  • “Joy”
  • “Most Beautiful Youth Who Ever Lived”
  • “Let’s Slip Down to the Pond”
  • “I Love a Girl, But She Lives Over There”
  • “Love-Sick”
  • “I Have Not Paint for My Eyes”
• Includes 13 Guided Reading Questions
• Question Bank for Recall and Reading Comprehension
• 3-Box Note-taking sheet
• 2 Half-Sheet Exit Tickets
• 1 Frayer Model Template for Vocabulary
• 1 Further Reading Guide
• Answer Keys for Student-Facing Questions
• Includes a helpful standards alignment chart for planning.

Why Use Google Forms and Easel in a Classroom?
Google Forms allow teachers to collect information about students’ learning. For example, Google Forms are editable. You can fit these Google Forms assessments to your specific needs. You can modify, delete, or even edit questions. You can also change the points value for the assessment. Also, from a data-collection point of view, Google Forms gives teachers a bird’s-eye view of student achievement — you can organize assessment results into amazing charts and graphs. You will then be able to identify what specifically students know and don’t know.

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