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Notes on the Story of Sinuhe : - ON BY Alan H. OARDINER, D. Litt. PA RlS (VIe) LIBKAIKIK HONOHfi CHAM PEON, EI)lTtiUK (T616phone 828-20) 5, QUAI MALAQUAIS, 5 - 1916 NOTES ON THE STORY OF SINUHE CHALON-SUR-SAONE, IMPRIMERIE FRANGAISE ET ORIENTALE E. BERTRAND 17'142 TO Bernard Pyne GRENFELL in friendship. PREFACE The present work, save for the new English translation and the indices now appended, is reprinted from the Recueil de Tiwmxrcx relatfs h la Philo- logie et h I'Arche'oloqie c'gyptieniaes et cmyriennes, vol. 32-34, 36. The considerations that led to the inception 01 the task, and the debt I owe to Sir Gaston Maspero in connection therewith, are recorded in the opening pages; and it has been my pleasant duty to note, iii their appropriate places, many valuable observations and corrections communicated by friends and colleagues who have kindly lent me their help. 1 have now to express my gratitude to Mr. Battiscornbe Gunn for assistance in the revisioii of the translation, and to Mr. T. Eric Peet for undertaking the extensive indices and carrying thein out in so admirable a fashion. To my publishers I am deeply indebted, not only for their patient tolerance of my repeated delays, but also for their extreme courage and obligingness in producing the book in times of unparalleled diEculty. The long intervals at which the different sections were written are responsible for many inconsistencies in the spelling of transliterated words and the like ; for these 1 crave the reader's indul- gence. CONTENTS Pages. Dedication .................... V Preface ..................... VI1 Contents ...................... IX Notes on the Story of Sinuhe : - ............. 1 I. Preliminaries on the comparative value of the Mss ..... 2 11. Cpmments on the text. ............. 8 111. The duplicate texts .............. 118 IV. Additional notes and corrections .......... 151 V. Further notes on the comparative value of the Mss ..... 162 VI. Sundry aspects of the tale ............ 164 VII. Translation ................. 168 Postscript. .................... 177 Indices:- .................... 181 I. General ......... ........ 181 11. Egyptian words . ............. 183 111. Coptic words ................ 192 Errata. ..................... 195 NOTES ON THE STORY OF SINUHE The plan of the series to which my recent volume on the Story of Sinuhe’ belongs did not admit of a full commentary on the text. There are several excellent reasons, which need not here be specified, why Museums should restrict their publi- cations to the bare communication of new material, leaving the elaboration thereof to private initiative; and this general principle was certainly rightly applied in the case of my book. The inclusion of a translation already passed beyond the strictly legitimate scope of such a work, but seemed justifiable on grounds of general utility and because of the small space it would occupy. I must confess it was this part of my task which cost me most labour and interested me most keenly, for not Only did I spare no pains to investigate the sense of all the rarer words in the tale - here the materials of the Berlin Dictionaryz stood me in good stead - but I also tried to reconstitute the text of the archetype, and not to adhere slavishly either to one or to the other of the manuscripts. By this means my translation came to differ consi- derably from the renderings of other scholars. I feel that I should be risking the charge of having made far too many and too daring innovations if I did not publish some defence of my views; a,nd I hope it will become plain from the series of articles of which this is the first that I have not been guilty of ignoring the labours of my predecessors. I have found with some embarassment that the work from which I have most often to dissent is one which a delicate attention on the part of its author 1. Hieratische Papyrus aus den Kgl. Museen 3u Berlin. 5 Bd. Literarische Te&e des mittleI.cn Reiclies. Herausg. von A. ERMAN,€1, Die Eradililurag des Sinuho uiid die Hirtengeschiclite. Bearbeilet UOIZ ALAN H. GARDINER,Leipaig, 1909. 2. This essay was compiled away from Berlin. I am indebted to Horrn Grapow for vcrifyirlg references in respect of which my notes proved deficient. 1 2 NOTES ON THE STORY OF SINUHE had closely connected with my own name. Still, the occasions are very few on which free and open discussion is not both in place and of positive benefit ; nor is so eminent a scholar as M. Maspero the one to discourage it. So far from that being the case, he has most readily consented to extend the hospitality of the Reczieil to my re- marks ; an additional courtesy, for which I herewith sincerely thank him. I shall begin with a discussion of the p-inzd facie view to be taken in the examination of particular critical details ’, and shall thence pass to the analysis of all the more difficult passages in the tale. This done, we shall be in a position to formulate a final judgement as to the respective value of the various manuscripts. The remainder of my essay will be devoted to the consideration of the literary and historical aspects of the tale. I PRELIMINARIES ON -THE COMPARATIVE CRITICAL VALUE OF THE MSS. It will be impossible to form an entirely correct estimate of the relative value of the two chief manuscripts B (the Berlin papyrus 3022) and R (the Ramesseutn papyrus) until the individual readings of those manuscripts have been compared and tested one by one. This however is a task which itself requires for its proper carrying out an a priori judgement as to whether the authorities ought to be compared as equal with equal, or whether one should start with a decided preference, based on general considerations, for one source of testimony its against the other. In this section therefore the ground will be cleared by the discussion of such matters as the date of the various manuscripts, and the relationship of the three later sources of the text to the two older ones. First with regard to the age of the papyri. That B is the oldest of them will hardly be disputed; in agreement with Moller I assign it to the very end of the 12th. or to the beginning of the 13th. Dy- nasty2. As for R, I was at first tempted to claim for it the same antiquity as B, but subsequent study has convinced me that it occupies a position intermediate between B and the group of papyri which Moller, in his admirable book on hieratic pal%ography, regards as typical of the Hyksos period3. On the one hand a number of signs in R seem to attach that papyrus to the Hyksos group: such are 1(15), (38), with dash at side (841, (43) and 7% (55). On the other hand certain signs appear to link R no less decidedly with the papyri of the 12th. Dynasty ; examples are 8 (25) and (39), both of which have the dash at the side higher than is later usual; so too 0 (7) without a dot over it, and (19) with legs 1. Even if I could accept the general position adopted by M. Maspero towards the critical problems of the tale, a new treatment of the matter would be necessary for two reasons : (1) because new portions of R have- been fouud since M. Maspero wrote his book; and (2) because I have greatly improved upon my first tran- scription of R, as could hardly fail to be the case with closer study. -2. M. MASPERO(Les Mdmoires de Sinoalzit, p. 11) admits the possibilily that B may even belong to the 14th. Dynasty. 3. Hiernt. Palceogi*., I, p. 17, foll. NOTES ON THE STORY OF SINUE-IE 3 not clearly distinguished but represented by one stroke, L (pussim) that hamsa form analogous to that found in the Pyisse and the Illahun papyri. In the spelling of the verb hw “to strike” is indeed no longer written as in the 12th. Dynasty, but has not yet become disintegrated,fi as in the Ebers, into two distinct signs‘. More important than such details is the fact that R shows no leming whatsoever towards the elaboration of form affected by certain signs during the Hyksos period; in R B (161), a (86) and w (42) have simple hieratic equivalents, free from all superfluous strokes. Nor again does R display any taste for the rounded contours and flourishes which Moller holds to be the most prominent characteristic of the Westcar and its congeners ’. Moller’s verdict on R, which deserves much respect, is that it is “ etwas junger ” than B. For my part I am ready to concede a considerable latitude for error, and therefore content myself with maintaining, as I did before, that the latest possible date for R is some time before the writing of the Rhind Mutlzemutical. M. Maspero seems to me to err when he compares R with the manuscripts of the early 18th. Dynasty’. It was hardly to be expected that he should accept without question my statement that all the other papyri emanating from the same find display an early type of writing; but that statement, for which the evidence is yet unpub- lished, cannot be disposed of by the brief comment that : “ les bibliothbques renfer- maient souvent des livres d’epoques tres diffdrentes ”. It is surely significant that the objects found together in the same box with the Ramesseum papyri have been pronounced, on excellent and nnbiassed archzological authority, to belong to the 12th. Dynasty. M. Maspero writes : “Si Gardiner adopte la chronologie rdduite de Borchardt et dEdouard Meyer, la distance est, somme toute, assez faible entre la date qu’il admet et celle que je propose.
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