Spatial Metaphors as Rhetorical Figures. Case Studies from Wisdom Texts of the Egyptian New Kingdom

Abstract

This study analyses a series of wisdom texts dating to the Egyptian New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period (1550–712 BC) in order to outline the rhetorical and communicative usage of spatial metaphors. The findings contribute significantly to our understanding of rhetoric: that the spatial metaphors (particularly path-based metaphors) become increasingly numerous and explicit when the rhetorical weight of the text increases – when, in other words, the more enumerative wisdom text genre comes to be influenced by the exhortations of scribal school texts.

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