The Tale of Sinuhe: and Other Ancient Egyptian Poems 1940-1640 B.C.

Khunanup is a peasant in the Wadi Natrun region. One day he calls his wife, Meret, to say he is going to Egypt to buy provisions. He asks her to measure out grain that she can make into bread and beer for him, and the rest he leaves for her. He then loads his donkeys with wares including reeds, fan palms, natron, salt, leopard skins and wolf hides, fruits and plants—“all the fair produce of Wadi Natrun” (58).

He travels to Heracleopolis. When he arrives in the area of Per-Fefi he meets a man called Nemtinakht, who serves the high steward, standing on the riverbank. Nemtinakht decides to rob the peasant and blocks the public pathway, which is no wider than a kilt (the measure of a length of linen). He has a servant lay a sheet over the path, where one side lies under water and the other is a field of barley, and then tells the peasant not to tread on his clothes.

The peasant swerves through the field. One of his donkeys eats a mouthful of barley, and Nemtinakht claims he will take the donkey for eating his grain. The peasant answers that this is robbery. Nemtinakht beats the peasant with a fresh tamarisk stick and takes all of his donkeys. The peasant weeps and spends a week petitioning Nemtinakht to give back his goods, but he refuses.

The peasant then goes to Heracleopolis to present his complaint to a follower of the High Steward, Rensi. When the steward asks his officials about the claim, the officials suggest this is a peasant of Nemtinakht’s who has run away, and Nemtinakht should repay the natron and salt. Rensi is quiet and does not respond to either the officials or the peasant.

The peasant then petitions Rensi directly, flattering him for his virtues as a great leader and seeking for Rensi to repair his loss. The steward goes to the Dual King Nebkaure to say he has been approached by a peasant whose speech is “truly perfect” (62). The king commands that Rensi delay judgment and instead bring the peasant’s speech to him in writing. The king also commands that, while the peasant waits, his wife and children are provided with sustenance. The peasant himself is given ten loaves of bread and two jars of beer daily.

The peasant appeals to Rensi a second time, reminding him to be helm, beam, and plumbline in his office. He warns Rensi that officials doing evil and judges carrying things off will cause truth to flee. He says if Rensi profits from the theft, Rensi is acting against himself, doing wrong like a messenger of Khenty or the Lady of Plague. As a helmsman, Rensi should steer his boat safely and ignore the officials speaking falsehoods.

In a third petition, the peasant compares Rensi to the sun god or the Nile flood. He exhorts him to punish the robber, protect the poor, and uphold truth, again using the imagery of sailing and steering. In this petition, the peasant issues a list of commands for Rensi to do right. He calls Rensi a hawk, a butcher, and a crocodile. Rensi sets attendants on the peasant with whips, and the peasant laments that Rensi has become an archetype of the evildoer.

In his fourth appeal, the peasant approaches Rensi coming out of the temple of Herishef and accuses him of being a destroyer, pleading with him to inform his heart and to act. In his fifth appeal, he uses the imagery of fishing to ask Rensi not to rob a wretch but instead be a dyke for the pauper, not the lake to drown him. The sixth time, he reminds Rensi of his duty to create goodness and destroy evil, comparing this action to fire cooking raw food.

A seventh time, the peasant repeats the idea that what is in the heart is unknowable, but evil deeds can be destroyed. He complains of his wretchedness, comparing himself to a breached dyke. He scolds Rensi that he has not helped anyone, neither made the ignorant wise nor educated the foolish. He says officials should be craftsmen, joiners of the severed head.

In his eighth appeal, the peasant claims the officials appointed to outlaw evil are sheltering the predator and pleads again for Rensi to uphold truth, as “Truth itself is for eternity” (73). Speak truth! Do truth! he exhorts the steward, as truth will lead to blessedness and fame. In his ninth appeal, the peasant again lectures Rensi about the nature of truth, pleading with him to listen and act. He vows he will go plead with Anubis, seeking death.

Finally, the High Steward responds by reading back each one of the peasant’s petitions. These are presented to the Dual King, who indeed finds them perfect. The king commands Rensi to make his judgment. An inventory is made of Nemtinakht’s household, and he and all his belongings—including his barley, his emmer, his swine, his donkeys, and his flocks—are given to the peasant.

Though it appears a simple adventure described by a retainer to cheer his master, “The Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor” contains an elaborate structure of embedded tales. The shared theme among them is the recommendation for self-control in the face of disaster. Speaking about suffering, the storytellers suggest, gives one the power to overcome it.

While the identity of the serpent the sailor meets is mysterious, he is likely a representation of the creator god. There are several ambiguities in the poem, and Parkinson says the final twist of the count’s dismissive response at the end leaves the reader in uncertainty. The tale, probably composed early in the 12th Dynasty, survives in a single manuscript, and the text is complete, which is rare for papyri of this age.

A follower counsels his count to be cheerful and to wash up in preparation for meeting the king. He then commences a story of when he went to the mining region, down to the sea. He specifies the dimensions of the boat and says of its 120 sailors, “They looked at the sky, they looked at the land / and their hearts were stouter than lions” (92). A gale wrecks the boat, and only the speaker survives, washed up on an island.

When he investigates, he finds the island full of food, and he builds a fire to make an offering to the gods. Then he hears a thundering noise. A serpent 30 cubits long approaches and carries the sailor away in his mouth. The serpent demands to know how the sailor came to the island, and the sailor repeats the description of the boat and its crew, then describes the gale.

The serpent tells the sailor to fear not, for God has let him live and brought him to “this island of the spirit […] and it is full of every good thing” (95). The serpent predicts the sailor will spend four months on the island, whereupon a ship from home will arrive and rescue him.

The serpent says there were once 75 serpents on the island, his kin. When the serpent and his daughter were away one day, a falling star burned the other serpents to corpses. He advises the sailor to appreciate his home, his children, and his wife. The sailor replies that he will tell the king and have him send herbs and incense; he will make offerings for the serpent and send boats laden with Egypt’s wealth. The serpent laughs and says he is the ruler of Punt; the island’s plenty is his, but the sailor will never see the island again, as it will disappear.

The predicted boat arrives, with crewmen the narrator recognizes. The serpent gives the sailor a cargo of valuable spices, incense, tails of giraffes, elephant tusks, apes and monkeys, and other riches. The sailor loads these onto the ship. The serpent predicts he will arrive home in two months, fill his embrace with his children, grow young again at home, and be buried there.

They sail north toward the Residence of the sovereign and arrive in two months. The sailor presents the sovereign with the serpent’s tribute and is made a Follower. From this, the narrator concludes, it is good to listen to men. The count has the last word, warning his friend not to act clever and asking, “Who pours water [for] a goose, when the day dawns for its slaughter on the morrow?” (97).

Though composed in the late Middle Kingdom, “The Tale of King Cheops’ Court” is set 700 years earlier, during the Fourth Dynasty, in the reign of King Cheops (Khufu), builder of the Great Pyramid at Giza. Set in the palace at Memphis, the scene is a bored king requiring his court to amuse him with stories.

Instead of recounting past wonders, as do those before, Hordedef introduces a contemporary celebrity, a commoner called Djedi. The culminating marvel is the birth of three children of the sun god to a mortal woman, a heritage attributed to royals. Parkinson notes that the structure is deceptively simple, the style more colloquial than that of the preceding tales, but it balances the frivolous events with a serious question about the difference between true and false things and the legitimacy of Cheops’ reign, since these three divine children could supplant him. The tale survives in one papyrus, with the beginning verses lost to damage.

The Dual King Cheops, responding to a speech in the lost opening, commands an offering be made to the Dual King Djoser and to the High Lector Priest Imhotep. Prince Chephren then tells of a wonder in the time of Nebka, who went to the temple of Ptah to make offerings, along with his High Priest Ubainer.

The wife of Ubainer is in love with a commoner and meets him in a pavilion of the garden to carry out their affair. The steward, learning of this, reports to Ubainer. In response Ubainer fashions a wax crocodile and writes a spell. He instructs the steward to put the crocodile in the pool where the commoner goes to wash. In the water the wax image becomes a crocodile of seven cubits and seizes the commoner in its mouth, pulling him underwater, where he stays for seven days. Ubainer invites the king to observe as he summons the crocodile, who spits out the commoner. Then Ubainer picks up the crocodile, which turns back to wax in his hand. Ubainer’s wife is burnt in punishment. King Cheops orders that offerings be made to King Nebka and to Ubainer.

Prince Bauefre tells a wonder from the time of Sneferu. The king’s lector priest and scribe Djadjaemankh advises him to sail to the lake of the Great House and be entertained on the boat rowed by 20 beautiful women wearing fishing nets. His Majesty enjoys the trip until one of the women stops rowing because she lost her fish pendant of new turquoise in the water. She relates this to the king, who relates it to Djadjaemankh, who says his words of magic to pile one side of the lake’s water atop the other and discover the fish-pendant. Djadjaemankh replaces the water and the king resumes his holiday. King Cheops orders offerings to the Dual King Sneferu and the high lector priest and scribe of the book, Djadjaemankh, for his deed of wisdom.

Prince Hordedef then suggests that, when speaking of past deeds, truth cannot be known from falsehood. He says there is someone living in his majesty’s own time, a commoner called Djedi, who knows how to rejoin a severed head and knows the numbers of the chambers of the Sanctuary of Thoth. The king orders Hordedef to bring him this man, and the prince travels by boat and palanquin to Djed-Sneferu. He greets Djedi, who is sitting on his porch being tended by his servants, and summons him to the court of Cheops.

Djedi returns with the prince to the Residence. The king wants him to demonstrate rejoining a severed head on a prisoner, but Djedi says he cannot perform such things on mankind. He demonstrates his power on a goose, then a bull. The king asks the number of the chambers of the Sanctuary of Thoth, and Djedi says the answer lies in a casket in a room in Heliopolis that can only be opened by the eldest of the three children in the womb of Ruddjedet, the wife of a priest of Re Lord of Sakhbu. The king assigns Djedi to the household of Prince Hordedef and gives him a salary.

Ruddjedet experiences a painful childbirth. Re Lord of Sakhbu supplicates the gods to help her, predicting that the children will serve them. The gods form a procession to the house of the priest, who admits them into the birthing chamber. Each god helps Ruddjedet give birth to a strong infant with golden limbs and a headdress of lapis lazuli. They wash and swaddle the infants and take turns naming each child and pronouncing his destiny.

Reusre, the priest, gives the gods 10 gallons of grain. The gods fashion three crowns, place them in the grain, then request the grain be put in a sealed room. After Ruddjedet’s purification is over, she sends for musicians’ grain, but the maid hears music coming from the sack. Ruddjedet puts the grain in a set of containers and seals it. Some days later, Ruddjedet punishes the housemaid with a beating. The housemaid is angry and tells her brother she is going to tell his majesty, the Dual King Cheops, of the three magical children. The brother strikes the maid. She then goes to fetch water and is seized by a crocodile. The brother finds Ruddjedet dejected over the quarrel with her maid and tells her the girl was taken by a crocodile. Here the story ends, as the remaining sections are lost.