VT 1^4) COHNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 393 DATE DUE M Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924091207393 In compliance with current copyright law, Cornell University Library produced this replacement volume on paper that meets the ANSI Standard Z39.48-1992 to replace the irreparably deteriorated original. 2001 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND ^ THE GIFT OF . Jt Hcnrg W. Sage 1891 B3e3n:xo. ; "sjXlh POPULAR STORIES OF ANCIENT EGYPT POPULAR STORIES ANCIENT EGYPT BY SIR G. MASPERO, K.C.B., D.C.L. OxoN., SECRETARY OF THEACADEMVOF INSCRIPTIONS AND MEMBER OFTHE INSTITUTE OP FRANCE; PROFESSOR AT THE COLLEGE DE FRANCE ; LATE DIRECTOR-GENERAL OF THE SERVICE OF ANTIQUITIES IN EGYPT. TRANSLATED BY MRS. C. H. W. JOHNS (a. S. GRIFFITH) FROM THE FOURTH FRENCH EDITION REVISED BY SIR G. MASPERO NEW YORK: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS LONDON: H. GREVEL & CO. 1915 . H 'I D PRINTED BV HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD., LONDON AND AYLESBURY, ENGUVND PREFACE TO ENQLISH EDITION This volume is not merely an exact translation of the published French edition. Sir Gaston Maspero has revised the work throughout, furnishing in places new renderings of the Egyptian texts and new readings of Egyptian names and titles. An index of proper names has been added as weU as one of general subjects. A. S. Johns. Cambridge 1915 CONTENTS PAOE Preface to English Edition . V Introduction .... COMPLETE STORIES The Story of the Two Brothers 1 Kjng Khufdi and the Magicians 21 The Lamentations of the Fellah 43 The Memoirs of SiNunix ...... 68 The Shipwrecked Sailor 98 How Thutiyi took the City of Joppa .... 108 The Cycle of Satni-Khamois : I. The Adventure of Satni-Khamois with the Mummies . , . .115 II. The Veritable History of Satni-KhamoIs AND his son Senosiris . .144 III. How Satni-Khamois triumphed over the As- syrians 170 The Cycle of Ramses II : I. The Daughter of the Prince op Bakhtan and the Possessing Spirit, . .172 ^> II. The Exploits of Sesostris .... 180 III. The Exploits of Osimandtas .... 183 vii viii CONTENTS PAGE The Doomed Prince 185 The Story of Rhampsinitus 196 The Voyage or Unamunu to the Coasts op Syria . 202 The Cycle of Petubastis : I. The High Emprise for the Cuirass . .217 II. The High Emprise for the Throne of Amon. 243 FRAGMENTS Introductory Note .263 Fragment of a Fantastic Story, anterior to the XVIIIth Dynasty 265 The Quarrel of Apopi and SaqnOnriya . 269 Fragments of a Ghost Story 275 Story of a Mariner 280 The Adventure of the Sculptor PetIisis and King Nectonabo 285 Fragments of the Theban-Coptic Version of the Romance OF Alexander 290 Epigraph 304 Index of Proper Names 305 Index of General Subjects . .313 INTRODUCTION When a story of the Pharaonic period analogous to the stories of The. Arabian Nights was discovered in 1852 by M. de Roug6, it occasioned great surprise even among the scholars who were supposed to know most about Ancient Egypt. The solemnity of the exalted personages whose mummies repose in our museums was so well established by renown, that no one suspected them of having been amused by such frivolities at the time when they were mummies only in expectation. The story existed neverthe- less J the manuscript had belonged to a prince, a king's son who himself became King SetuI II, son of Minephtah, grandson of Sesostris. An Englishwoman, Madame Elizabeth d'Orbiney, bought it in Italy, and on her way home through Paris M. de Rouge explained the contents to her. They concern two brothers, the younger of whom, falsely accused by the wife of the other and forced to take to flight, changed into a bull, then into a tree, and finally was re-boi'n in the person of a king. M. de Rouge ^ made a paraphrase of the text rather than a translation ; several portions were simply analysed, others were broken at short intervals by numerous lacunae, caused either by the bad condition of the papyrus or due to the difficulty encountered in deciphering certain groups of signs, or in disentangling the subtleties of the syntax ; even the name of the hero is incorrectly transcribed.^ Since that time no specimen of Egyptian literature has been more minutely studied, or with greater profit. The unceasing industry of scholars has corrected the errors and filled in the ' In the Revue arclieologique, 1852, vol. viii, pp. 30 et seq., and in the Athencewm franfais, vol. i, 1852, pp. 280-284 ; of. (Euvres diverses, vol. ii, pp. 303-319. ^ SaUi instead of Baiti. It was M. de RougS himself who later on corrected this error. iz X INTRODUCTION gaps. To-day the Story of the Two Brothers can be read consecutively, with the exception of a few words, i For twelve years it remained unique of its kind. A thousand relics of the past were brought to light —lists of conquered provinces, catalogues of royal names, funerary inscriptions, songs of victory, private letters, books of accounts, formulae of magic incantations, and judicial documents, as well as treatises on medicine and geometry—but nothing resembling a romance. In 1864, near Deir-el-Medineh and in the tomb of a Coptic monk, illicit explora- tions brought to light a wooden coffer, which besides the cartulary of a neighbouring convent contained manuscripts which had nothing monastic about them—the moral advice of a scribe to his son,^ prayers for the twelve hours of the night, and a story yet more strange than that of the Two Brothers. The hero is called Satni-Khamois, and he holds debates with a band of talking mummies, sorcerers and magicians, ambiguous beings of whom one is doubtful whether they are living or dead. It is not easy to see what could justifj' the presence of a pagan romance beside the body of a monk. We may conjecture that the possessor of the papyri must have been one of the last of the Egyptians who had known anything of the ancient writings, and that at his death his devout companions enclosed in his grave the magic books of which they understood nothing, and which they regarded as some unfathomable snare of the evil one. However that may have been, the romance was then incomplete at the beginning, but sufficiently complete further on to be made out without difficulty by a scholar accustomed to demotic' Up to that time the study of demotic writing had not been very popular among Egyptologists ; the tenuity and indecision of the characters that compose it, the novelty of the grammatical forms, and the dullness or feebleness of the subjects dealt with, alarmed or ' This is the first story given in this volume, pp. 1-20. ^ Analysed by Maspero in The Academy (August 1871), and by Brugsch, Alt'dgyptische Lebensregeln in einem hieratisclien Papyrtis des vice- kSniglichen Museums zu Bulaq, in the Zeitschrift, 1872, pp. 49-51, com- pletely translated by E. de Eouge, Etude sur la Papyrus du Musee de Boulaq, lue a la seance du 25 aout 1872, 8vo, 12 pp. (Extrait des Comptes rendus de VAcademic des Inscriptions et Selles-Lettres, 2* S§rie, vol. vii, pp. 340-351), by Chabas, L"Egyptologie, vols, i-ii, Les maximes du scribe Ani, 4to, 1876-1877, and by Amfilineaa, Za Morale ^yptienne, 8vo, 1890. ' The writing in use for the civil and religious life at the commencement of the XXVIth dynasty was called demotic. It was deriyed from the ancient cursive writing known as Jderatit. INTRODUCTION xi repelled them. That which Emmanuel de Roug6 did for the d'Orbiney papyrus, Brugsch alone was then capable of attempting for the Boulaq papyrus; the translation published by him, in 1867, in the Revue arckeologique, is so correct that at the present time few changes have been made in it.^ Since then successive discoveries have been made. In 1874 Goodwin, ferreting haphazard in the Harris collection, just acquired by the British Museum, came upon the Adverdwes of the Doomed Prince,^ and on the conclusion of a tale which he regarded as possessing historic value, notwithstanding some similarity with the story of Ali Baba.' Several weeks later Chabas observed at Turin what he thought to be disconnected portions of a kind of licentious rhapsody,* and at Boulaq the remains of a love story.* Immediately afterwards, at Petrograd, GolenischefE deciphered three romances, of which the texts are not yet fully edited.* Then Erman published a long story about Cheops and the magicians, the manuscript of which formerly belonged to Lepsius and is now in the Berlin Museum.' Krall researched in the fine collection of the Archduke R6gnier, ' It is the Adventure of Sgiiii- KlMllM^s_wMkthejnvii/>nmies, pp. 115-144 of this volume. " Transactions of the Society of Bihlical ArcTueology, vol. iii, pp. 349-356, announced by M. Chabas at the Acad6mie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres during the session of April 17, 1874; of. Comptes retidus, 1874, pp. 92, 117-120, and pp. 185-195 of this volume. • Transactions of the Society of Siblical Arehceology, vol. iii, pp. 340-348. It is published in this volume under the title of How Thutiyi took the town ofjoppa, pp. 108-114. ' Announced by M. Chabas at the Acad6mie des Inscriptions et Belles- Lettres during the session of April 17, 1875, and published under the title VEpisode du Jardin des Flews, in Comptes rendus, 1875, pp. 92, 120-124. The careful examination I have made of the original has con- vinced me that the fragments have been badly put together, and that they should be placed in a very different arrangement from that known to M.