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REMARKS Of the tale of the peasant and the workman three copies, more or less imperfect, remain to us. At Berlin are two papyri, Nos. 2 and 4, containing parts of the tale, published in facsimile in the "Denkmaler" of Lepsius vi. 108-110 and 113; while portions of another copy exist in the Butler papyrus; and lately fragments of the same have been collated in the collection of Lord Amherst of Hackney. These last have been published in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, xiv. 558. The number of copies seem to show that this was a popular tale in early times; it certainly is of a more advanced type than the earlier tales of magic, though it belongs to a simpler style than the tales which follow. It has been translated partially by Chabas and Goodwin, and also by Maspero, but most completely by Griffith in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, referred to above.
76 SEKHTI AND HEMTI
The beginning of the tale is lost in all the copies, and an introductory sentence is here added in brackets, to explain the position of affairs at the opening of the fragment. The essence of the tale is the difference in social position between the Sekhti, or peasant, and the Hemti, or workman—the fellah and the client of the noble; and the impossibility of getting justice against a client, unless by some extraordinary means of attracting his patron's attention, is the basis of the action. There is not a single point of incident here which might not be true in modern times; every turn of it seems to live, as one reads it in view of country life in Egypt. The region of the tale is Henenseten, or Herakleopolis, now Ahnas, a little south of the Fayum. This was the seat of the IXth and Xth Dynasties, apparently ejected from Memphis by a foreign invasion of the Delta; and here it is that the High Steward lives and goes to speak to the king. The district of the Sekhti is indicated by his travelling
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