Table Of ContentP S
OPULAR TORIES OF
A E
NCIENT GYPT
a
ABC-CLIO Classic Folk and Fairy Tales
Jack Zipes,Series Editor
Collectors in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries unearthed
a wealth of stories from around the world and published them in
English translations for the delight of general readers, young and old.
Most of these anthologies have been long out of print.
The ABC-CLIO Classic Folk and Fairy Tales series brings back to
life these key anthologies of traditional tales from the golden age of
folklore discovery.Each volume provides a freshly typeset but otherwise
virtually unaltered edition of a classic work and each is enhanced by an
authoritative introduction by a top scholar.These insightful essays dis-
cuss the significance of the collection and its original collector; the
original collector’s methodology and translation practices;and the orig-
inal period context according to region or genre.
Certain to be of interest to folklorists,these classic collections are also
meant to serve as sources for storytellers and for sheer reading pleasure,
reviving as they do hundreds of folk stories, both reassuringly familiar
and excitingly strange.
other titles in this series:
Creation Myths ofPrimitive America,by Jeremiah Curtin;
Introduction by Karl Kroeber
English Fairy Tales and More English Fairy Tales, by Joseph Jacobs;
Introduction by Donald Haase
Italian Popular Tales, by Thomas Frederick Crane;
Introduction by Jack Zipes
Folktales from Northern India, by William Crooke and
Pandit Ram Gharib Chaube;
Introduction by Sadhana Naithani
Old Deccan Days or Hindoo Fairy Legends,by Mary Frere;
Introduction by Kirin Narayan
Popular Tales and Fictions, by William Alexander Clouston;
Introduction by Christine Goldberg
Popul ar S tor ie s
of
Ancient Eg y p t
a
Sir G. Maspero
Edited and with an Introduction
by Hasan El-Shamy
Santa Barbara,California
Denver,Colorado Oxford,England
Copyright © by ABC-CLIO,Inc.
All rights reserved.No part of this publication may be reproduced,stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, elec-
tronic,mechanical,photocopying,recording,or otherwise,except for the
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
‒
Maspero,G.(Gaston), .
Popular stories of ancient Egypt / by Sir G.Maspero;edited and
with an introduction by Hasan El Shamy.
p.cm.— (ABC-CLIO classic folk and fairy tales)
Includes index.
‒‒‒
ISBN (hardcover:alk.paper)
1.Tales—Egypt. .Legends—Egypt. .Egypt—Civilization—To 332
b.c. I.El-Shamy,Hasan M., – II.Title.III.Series.
GR .M
.
' —dc
(cloth)
This edition reprints in its entirety and retains the original chapter sequence of
Popular Stories of Ancient Egypt,collected and edited by Gaston Maspero,
translated by Mrs.C.H.W.Johns,published in New York by G.P.Putnam’s
Sons and in London by H.Grevel & Co.,1915.The text ofthis edition has been
altered only to fit an increased page dimension and to reflect contemporary
typographical conventions.
ABC-CLIO,Inc.
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This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an e-book.Visit
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a
C
ONTENTS
Introduction to This Edition and Classification
by Tale-Type and Motif vii
Preface to English Edition xci
Introduction xciii
Complete Stories
1 The Story of the Two Brothers 1
2 The King Khufuî and the Magicians 17
3 The Lamentations of the Fellah 35
4 The Memoirs of Sinuhît 55
5 The Shipwrecked Sailor 81
6 How Thutîyi Took the City of Joppa 89
The Cycle of Satni-Khamoîs:
7 I. The Adventure of Satni-Khamoîs with
the Mummies 95
8 II. The Veritable History of Satni-Khamoîs
and His Son Senosiris 118
9 III. How Satni-Khamoîs Triumphed over
the Assyrians 137
The Cycle of Ramses II:
10 I. The Daughter of the Prince of Bakhtan
and the Possessing Spirit 141
Contents
11 II. The Exploits of Sesôstris 147
12 III. The Exploits of Osimandyas 150
13 The Doomed Prince 153
14 The Story of Rhampsinitus 163
15 The Voyage of Unamunu to the Coasts of
Syria 169
The Cycle of Petubastis:
16 I. The High Emprise for the Cuirass 181
17 II. The High Emprise for the Throne of
Amon 201
Fragments
Introductory Note 217
18 Fragment of a Fantastic Story, Anterior
to the Eighteenth Dynasty 219
19 The Quarrel of Apôpi and Saqnûnrîya 223
20 Fragments of a Ghost Story 229
21 Story of a Mariner 233
22 The Adventure of the Sculptor Petêsis
and King Nectonabo 239
23 Fragments of the Theban-Coptic Version
of the Romance of Alexander 243
24 Epigraph: On Those Who Caused Alexander
to Drink the Death Potion 255
Index of Proper Names 257
Index of General Subjects 269
About the Volume Editor 277
a
I T E
NTRODUCTION TO HIS DITION
AND
C T T M
LASSIFICATION BY ALE- YPE AND OTIF
M
OF ASPERO’S
P S A E
OPULAR TORIES OF NCIENT GYPT
Hasan El-Shamy
The Author
Sir Gaston Camille Charles Maspero is one of the towering figures in
the fields of Egyptology and archaeology.He was born in France on June
, ,to a French mother and an Italian father;he died on June , .
Maspero’s interest in ancient Egypt and classical cultures emerged while
he was still a teenager.He was introduced to the study of hieroglyphs by
Auguste Mariette ( – ), founder and director of the service des
antiquités de l’Égypte and the musée de Boulaq in Cairo (currently the
Egyptian Museum). He was educated at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand and
the École Normale. Shortly afterward, he became professor of Egyptol-
ogy at the École des Hautes Études, and he was appointed professor of
Egyptian Philology and Archaeology at the Collège de France in .
The opportunity to visit Egypt came in ;he went as part of a French
mission,an organization that later became known as the Institute Français
d’Archaeologie Orientale. He worked closely with Auguste Mariette, his
mentor,and when Mariette died one year later,Maspero succeeded him to
the directorship of the Service and the Boulaq Museum.His tenure in that
position of leadership was for a period of some twenty years,in two inter-
vals:from to ,and again from to .
Maspero organized the Service into inspectorates throughout Egypt,
and traveled extensively up and down the Nile on board a private house-
boat, often accompanied by friends. Thus, he came into close contact
Introduction to This Edition
with the Egyptian population, especially laborers who worked on exca-
vation sites, and observed their traditional activities, especially singing,
which he tried to collect (see pp. xxviii–xxxi, below). Also, in between
those trips to investigate archaeological sites,he carried out his own work
at Giza and arranged for the recording of the tombs in the Valley of the
Kings. Many discoveries are credited to him. In , the appearance of
small royal objects on the antiquities market alerted officials to the pos-
sibility of an ongoing grave robbery.In a manner reminiscent of the “The
Story of Rhampsinitus,” the investigation of the source and the search
for the grave robber led to a major discovery of royal mummies in Deir
el-Bahari,which were quickly moved to the museum in Cairo.
Maspero proved to be a meticulous scholar with vast knowledge in a
variety of fields,and a prolific author.More than one thousand books and
articles on Egyptology, the history of civilization, and affiliated subjects
bear his name.Among his chief works is the editing of the fifty-volume
Cairo Catalogue of Antiquities and the Nubian Temple volumes.
Biographers describe Maspero as having been “sociable,”“diplomatic,”
“shrewd,”and “portly.”These personal characteristics were advantageous
traits for running the Service, since archaeological activities often
revolved around social life and interaction with foremen and laborers.
Also,being “portly”may be presumed to have given him an aura of kind-
ness among Egyptian and other Arabic-speaking assistants. (See “....
Fieldwork Factor in Maspero’s Work,”pp.xxviii–xxx,below).
Through his international contacts,Maspero won support for his pro-
jects from a wide circle of influential persons in the West. He was also
helpful to fellow authors, such as Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie,
whose illustrated Egyptian Tales was published in .
Maspero returned to France in as permanent secretary of the
Académie des inscriptions et belles lettres.He died two years later,at age
,as he was about to address a meeting of the Académie in Paris.
.See tale No.,pp.–,in Maspero’s Popular Stories.
.Mot.W...§,“Fat persons are good hearted.”See:H.El-Shamy,Folk Traditions of
the Arab World:A Guide to MotifClassification,vols.(Indiana University Press,Bloomington,
Ind.,).
.Petrie acknowledged his indebtedness to Maspero’s Contes,and described his own Tales
as the first book that presents in the English language “the oldest literature and fiction of the
world.”Petrie,Series I,p..
.Some sources describe Maspero’s life as “marred by tragedy”(perhaps a hyperbole):he
lost his first wife early in their married life,then he lost a beloved son in World War I.It is
Introduction to This Edition
The Book
Popular Stories ofAncient Egyptis an anthology of narratives gleaned from
various ancient written sources.When first published in , under the
title Contes populaires de l’Égypte ancienne, it was the first anthology of
ancient Egyptian narratives in book form.
The link between ancient Egyptian narrative accounts and folktales
(contes populaires) was established in when Emmanuel de Rougé
announced the discovery of the “Tale of Two Brothers.”The tale came to
be viewed as a work of pure fantasy, a category of narrative not before-
hand encountered in Egyptian records. Previously known narratives
belonged to the realms of belief (myths,religious legends) and of the fac-
tual (historical legends,personal experiences,and business reports).
A flurry of studies of that tale and debates about its nature ensued.In
W. Mannhardt designated the tale as “the oldest Märchen” in the
world—a viewpoint cited by Maspero and recently confirmed in an
exhaustive monographic study of that tale. Maspero contributed to the
debates with studies focused on the story. His interest in the folktale
peaked with the publication of the present anthology, which assembled
scattered texts of ancient Egyptian stories and in which “The Tale of the
Two Brothers”was the lead text as the celebrated ancient folktale.
In response to demands by a readership that was broad and diverse,
three more editions of the anthology were published. The edition in
English appeared in . The translator, Mrs. C. H. W. Johns, states
suspected that Maspero’s sudden death might have been due to a “broken heart.”Another son
was killed in World War II (but that loss couldn’t have affected Maspero).A grandson estab-
lished the Maspéro Publishing House in commemoration of his august grandfather and his
distinguished services to the world of knowledge.
.A volume in Les littératures populaires de toutes les nations,IV.Paris:Maisonneuve et
Cie.
.See Maspero,Popular Stories,p..Also see Susan T.Hollis,The Ancient Egyptian “Tale
ofTwo Brothers,”The Oldest Fairy Tale in the World.University of Oklahoma Press:Norman
and London .
.E.g.,Gaston Maspero.“Le Conte des deux frères:récit égyptien d’il y à trois mille ans,”
in Revue de Cours Littéraires,(Feb.,):–;and “Conte des deux frères,”in Revue
Archéologique,XXXV (March ).–.
.In ,,;more recently a reprint of the first edition was issued in ,Maison-
neuve et Larose.
.Offered here by ABC-CLIO in the new series.Also it was reprinted in :New Hyde
Park,N.Y.:University Books.
