On reading it, one immediately thinks of Sindbad the Sailor, except that the serpents it was Sindbad’s fortune to meet were far from being the amiable creatures described by the Egyptian sailor. There is, indeed, no very good reason to consider the famous tale of the Thousand and One Nights as a modern version of the Egyptian narrative. The sailors’ love for the recital of marvellous adventure is too natural, too far-spread, for us to fasten the one upon the other.
The tale of The Castaway seems clearly to be a theological idea dressed up in romance form. The mysterious island is the Isle of the Double, i.e. the home of dead souls, and the serpent is its guardian. The voyage describes the long journey to the other world—that trip on the mysterious western sea, and the final reaching of the home of the soul. The basic conception of the whole thing is typically Egyptian. Perhaps our estimate of Egyptian literature cannot be completed better than by the presentation of the actual text of this romance. Our version is from G. Maspero’s rendering of M. Golenischeff’s translation of the original papyrus in the Imperial Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.[a]
THE CASTAWAY: A TALE OF THE TWELFTH DYNASTY
The learned attendant said: “Rejoice thy heart, O my chief, for we have just reached the fatherland; after having manned the prow of the ship and worked the oars, the prow has grazed the sand. All our men are rejoicing and embracing each other, for if others beside ourselves have come safely home, not a man among us is missing, and, moreover, we have gone to the farthest limits of Uauat, and have crossed the regions of Senmut. Here we are returned in peace, and here we are back in our fatherland. Listen, O my chief, for if thou dost not uphold me, I have no support. Wash thee, pour water over thy hands, then go, address thyself to Pharaoh, and may thy heart preserve thy speech from confusion, for if a man’s mouth may save him, on the other hand, his words may cause his face to be covered over;[12] act according to the impulse of thy heart, and anything thou mayest say will put me at ease.
“Now I shall relate to thee what happened to me personally. I set out for the mines of Honhem, and went to sea in a ship one hundred and fifty cubits long and forty wide, with one hundred and fifty of the best sailors in the land of Egypt, men who had seen heaven and earth, and whose hearts were stouter than those of lions. They had foretold that the wind would not be unfavourable, or that we would have none at all; but a gust of wind sprang up as soon as we were on the deep, and as we approached the shore, the breeze freshened and stirred the waves to a height of eight cubits. As for myself, I seized a plank, but the rest perished, without one remaining. A wave of the sea threw me upon an island after I had spent three days with no other companion than my own heart. I lay down to rest in a thicket, and darkness enveloped me; then I employed my legs in search of something for my mouth. I found figs and grapes and many kinds of fine vegetables, berries, nuts, melons of all kinds, fish, birds,—nothing was lacking. I satisfied my hunger, and threw away the surplus of what I had gathered. I dug a ditch, lit a fire, and prepared a sacrifice to the gods.
“Suddenly I heard a voice like thunder, caused, as I believed, by a wave of the sea. The trees trembled, the earth shook; I uncovered my face, and saw that a serpent was approaching. He was thirty cubits long, with a beard that hung down for over two cubits; his body was as if incrusted with gold on a colour of lapis lazuli. He planted himself before me, opened his mouth, and while I remained dumbfounded before him, he said:
“‘What has brought thee, what has brought thee, little one, what has brought thee? If thou delayest to tell me what has brought thee to this isle, I will make thee know what thou art; either thou shalt disappear like a flame, or thou shalt tell me something I never before have heard, and which I knew not before.’ Then he seized me in his mouth, carried me to his lair, and laid me down unharmed; I was safe and sound and whole.
“Then he opened his mouth, and while I remained speechless before him, he said, ‘What has brought thee, what has brought thee, little one, to this isle which is in the sea and whose shores are in the midst of the waves?’
“I replied with arms hanging low before him.[13] I said: ‘I embarked for the mines, by Pharaoh’s order, in a ship one hundred and fifty cubits long and forty wide. It was manned by one hundred and fifty of the best sailors of the land of Egypt, who had seen heaven and earth, and whose hearts were stouter than those of the gods. They had declared that the wind would not be unfavourable, or even that there would be none at all, for each one of them surpassed his companions in the prudence of his heart and the strength of his arms, and I, I yielded to them in nothing; but a storm arose while we were on the deep, and as we approached the shore the gale still freshened and threw up the waves to a height of eight cubits. As for myself, I seized a plank, but the rest on the ship perished and not one remained with me during three days. And now here I am with thee, for I was cast on this isle by a wave of the sea.’