To date, little work has been conducted on the issue of deliberate metaphor in Ancient Egyptian texts. For this reason, before any further work in this direction ensues, it is important to consider the way in which we can define ‚deliberateness’ in relation to ancient languages. Because there is no means of elicitation and experimentation, could it also mean that the things ancient world scholars are looking for are different to the kinds of markers we expect from modern investigations? In order to open the debate, not only for Egyptian texts but for ancient world texts in general, I seek in this paper to outline the different kinds of markers, from the graphemic level through to the intratextual level, that may be marking deliberate metaphorical language usage.