A large proportion of these inscriptions are, to be sure, religious in character, but there are other extensive inscriptions, such as those on the walls of the temple of Karnak, that are strictly historical; telling of the warlike deeds of such mighty kings as Thûtmosis III. and Ramses II. Again, there are documents which belong to the domain of belles-lettres pure and simple. Of these the best known example is the now famous “Tale of Two Brothers”—the prototype of the “modern” short story.
Up to the middle of the nineteenth century, no Egyptologist had discovered that the grave-faced personages who lie in their mummy-cases in our great museums ever read or composed romance. Their literature, as far as recovered, was of an eminently serious nature,—hymns to the divinities, epic poems, writings on magic and science, business letters, etc., but no stories. In 1852, however, an Englishwoman, Mrs. Elizabeth d’Orbiney, sent M. de Rougé, at Paris, a papyrus she had purchased in Italy, and whose contents she was anxious to know. Thus was the tale of the “Two Brothers” brought to light, and for twelve years it remained our sole specimen of a species of literature which is now constantly being added to.
This remarkable papyrus dates from the thirteenth century B.C., and was the work of Anna, one of the most distinguished temple-scribes of his age. Indeed, it is to him that we are indebted for a large portion of the Egyptian literature that has been preserved to us. This particular work was executed for Seti II., son of Meneptah, and grandson of Ramses II. of the nineteenth dynasty, while he was yet crown prince.
The tale itself is clearly formed of two parts. The first, up to the Bata’s self-exile to the Valley of the Cedar, gives a really excellent picture of the life and habits of the peasant dwelling on the banks of the Nile. The civilisation and moral conditions it describes are distinctly Egyptian. Were it not for such details as the words spoken by the cows, and the miraculous appearance of the body of water between the two brothers, we might say the ancient Egyptians were strict realists in their theory of fiction. But the second part leads us through marvels enough to satisfy the most vivid of imaginations. It is possible, therefore, that the tale as we have it was originally two separate stories.
The main theme of the story has occupied a great deal of attention. Its analogy to the Biblical narrative of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife comes at once into the reader’s mind. But there is just as close a similarity in the Greek tales, where the hero is killed or his life endangered for having scorned the guilty love of a woman, as in the stories of Hippolytus, Peleus, Bellerophon, and the son of Glaucus, not to mention the extraordinary adventure of Amgiad and Assad, sons of Prince Kamaralzaman, in the Thousand and One Nights.
The religions of Greece and Western Asia likewise contain myths that can be compared almost point for point with the tale of the two brothers. In Phrygia, for example, Atyo scorns the love of the goddess Cybele, as does Bata the love of Anpu’s wife. Like Bata, again, he mutilates himself, and is transformed into a pine instead of a persea tree. Are we, therefore, to seek for the common origin of all the myths and romance in the tragedy of Anpu and Bata that was current, we know not how long, before the days of King Seti?
Of one thing we may be sure: of this particular type the Egyptian tale is by far the oldest that we possess, and, if we may not look to the valley of the Nile as the original home of the popular tale, we may justly regard it as the locality where it was earliest naturalised and assumed a true literary form.
Analogies to the second part of the tale are even more numerous and curious. They are to be found everywhere, in France, Italy, Germany, Hungary, in Russia and all Slavonic countries, Roumania, Peloponnesia, in Asia Minor, Abyssinia, and even India.
Of late years an ever-increasing accumulation of the literature of every age of Egyptian history has either been brought to light or for the first time studied from a wider point of view than was formerly possible. In making a few typical selections from the mass of this new material, none perhaps are more worthy of note than some of the love-songs which have been translated into German from Egyptian in “Die Liebespoesie der Alten Ægypten,” by W. Max Muller. This is a very careful edition of the love-songs on the recto (or upper surface) of the Harris Papyrus 500, and of similar lyrics from Turin, Gizeh, and Paris. The introduction contains an account of Egyptian notions of love and marriage, gathered from hieroglyphic and demotic sources, and a chapter is devoted to the forms of Egyptian verse, its rhythm and accent. The interesting “Song of the Harper,” which is found on the same Harris Papyrus, is also fully edited and collated with the parallel texts from the Theban tombs, and compared with other writings dealing with death from the agnostic point of view. The following extracts are translated from the German:
LOVE-SICKNESS
I will lie down within doors
For I am sick with wrongs. T
hen my neighbours come in to visit me.
With them cometh my sister,
She will make fun of the physicians;
She knoweth mine illness.