Egyptian Tales Volume II Part 2

And many days after these things the princess stood at the table of Pharaoh, and the king was pleased with her. And she said to his majesty, "Swear to me by G.o.d, saying, 'That which the princess shall say to me I will obey it for her.'" And he hearkened unto all she said. And he commanded, "Let these two Persea trees be cut down, and let them be made into goodly planks." And he hearkened unto all she said. And after this his majesty sent skilful craftsmen, and they cut down the Persea trees of Pharaoh; and the princess, the royal wife, was standing looking on, and they did all that was in her heart unto the trees. But a chip flew up, and it entered into the mouth of the princess; she swallowed it, and after many days she bore a son. And one went to tell his majesty, "There is born to thee a son." And they brought him, and gave to him a nurse and servants; and there were rejoicings in the whole land. And the king sat making a merry day, as they were about the naming of him, and his majesty loved him exceedingly at that moment, and the king raised him to be the royal son of Kush.

Now after the days had multiplied after these things, his majesty made him heir of all the land. And many days after that, when he had fulfilled many years as heir, his majesty flew up to heaven. And the heir said, "Let my great n.o.bles of his majesty be brought before me, that I may make them to know all that has happened to me." And they brought also before him his wife, and he judged with her before him, and they agreed with him. They brought to him his elder brother; he made him hereditary prince in all his land. He was thirty years king of Egypt, and he died, and his elder brother stood in his place on the day of burial.

_Excellently finished in peace, for the_ ka _of the scribe of the treasury Kagabu, of the treasury of Pharaoh, and for the scribe Hora, and the scribe Meremapt. Written by the scribe Anena, the owner of this roll. He who speaks against this roll, may Tahuti smite him._

REMARKS

This tale, which is perhaps, of all this series, the best known in modern times, has often been published. It exists only in one papyrus, that of Madame d'Orbiney, purchased by the British Museum in 1857. The papyrus had belonged to Sety II. when crown prince, and hence is of the XIXth Dynasty. Most of the great scholars of this age have worked at it: __De Rouge, Goodwin, Renouf, Chabas, Brugsch, Ebers, Maspero, and Groff have all made original studies on it. The present translation is, however, a fresh one made by Mr. Griffith word for word, and shaped as little as possible by myself in editing it. The copy followed is the publication by Birch in "Select Papyri," part ii. pls. ix. to xix.

Before considering the details of the story, we should notice an important question about its age and composition. That it is as old as the XIXth Dynasty in its present form is certain from the papyrus; but probably parts of it are older. The idyllic beauty of the opening of it, with the simplicity and directness of the ideas, and the absence of any impossible or marvellous feature, is in the strongest opposition to the latter part, where marvel is piled on marvel in pointless profusion. In the first few pages there is not a word superfluous or an idea out of place in drawing the picture. That we have to do with an older story lengthened out by some inartistic compiler, seems only too probable. And this is borne out by the colophon. In the tales of the Shipwrecked Sailor, and of Sanehat, the colophon runs--"This is finished from beginning to end, even as it was found in the writing," and the earlier of these two tales follows this with a blessing on the transcriber. But, apparently conscious of his meddling, the author of Anpu and Bata ends with a curse: "Written by the scribe Anena, the owner of this roll. He who speaks against this roll, may Tahuti smite him." This points to a part of it at least being newly composed in Ramesside times; while the delicate beauty of the opening is not only far better than the latter part, but is out of harmony with the forced and artificial taste of the XIXth Dynasty. At the same time, the careful drawing of character is hardly akin to the simple, matter-of-fact style of Sanehat, and seems more in keeping with the emotional style of the Doomed Prince. If we attribute the earlier part to the opening of the XVIIIth Dynasty--the age of the pastoral scenes of the tombs of El Kab, which are the latest instances of such sculptures in Egypt--we shall probably be nearest to the truth.

The description of Bata is one of the most beautiful character-drawings in the past. The self-denial and sweet innocence of the lad, his sympathy with his cattle, "listening to all that they said," and allowing them their natural wishes and ways, is touchingly expressed.

And those who know Egypt will know that Bata still lives there--several Batas I have known myself. His sweetness of manner, his devotion, his untiringly earnest work, his modesty, his quietness, makes Bata to be one of the most charming friends. Bata I have met in many places, Bata I have loved as one of the flowers of human nature, and Bata I hope often to meet again in divers forms and varied incarnations among the _fellah_ lads of Egypt.

The touches of description of Bata are slight, and yet so pointed. His growing to be an excellent worker; his return at evening laden with all the produce, just as may be seen now any evening as the lads come in bearing on their backs large bundles of vegetables for the house, and of fodder for the home-driven cattle; his sleeping with his cattle in the stable; his zeal in rising before dawn to make the daily bread for his brother, ready to give him when he arose; and then his driving out the cattle to pasture--all contrasts with his elder brother's life of ease.

The making of the bread was rightly the duty of Anpu's wife; she ought to have risen to grind the corn long before dawn, as the millstones may now be heard grinding in the dark, morning by morning; she ought to have baked the bread ready for the toiler who spent his whole day in the field. But it was the ever-willing Bata who did the work of the house as well as the work of the farm. "Behold the spirit of a G.o.d was in him."

The driving in of the cattle at night is still a particular feature of Egyptian life. About an hour before sunset the tether ropes are drawn in the fields, and the cattle file off, with a little child for a leader--if any; the master gathers up the produce that is required, some buffalo is laden with a heap of clover, or a lad carries it on his back, for the evening feed of the cattle, and all troop along the path through the fields and by the ca.n.a.l. For two or three miles the road becomes more and more crowded with the flocks driven into it from every field, a long haze of dust lies glowing in the crimson glory of sunset over the stream of cows and buffaloes, sheep and goats, that pour into the village. Each beast well knows his master and his crib, and turns in at the familiar gate to the stable under the house, or by the side of the hut; and there all spend the night. Not a hoof is left out in the field; the last belated stragglers come in while the gleam of amber still edges the night-blue sky behind the black horizon. Then the silent fields lie under the brightening moon, glittering with dew, untrodden and deserted.

It is not cold or climate that leads men to this custom, but the unsafety of a country bordered by unseen deserts, whence untold men may suddenly appear and ravage all the plain.

The ploughing scene next follows, on "the land coming out from the water"; as the inundation goes down the well-known banks and ridges appear, "the back-bones of the land," as they were so naturally called; and when the surface is firm enough to walk on--with many a pool and ditch still full--the ploughing begins on the soft dark clay.

The catastrophe of the story--the black gulf of deceit that suddenly opens under Bata's feet--has always been seen to be strikingly like the story of Joseph. And--as we have noticed--there is good reason for the early part of this tale belonging to about the beginning of the XVIIIth Dynasty, so it is very closely allied in time as well as character to the account of Joseph. In this part again is one of those pointed touches, which show the power of the poet--for a poem in prose this is--"her heart knew him with the knowledge of youth."

On reaching the mistaken revenge of Anpu, we see the sympathy of Bata with his cattle, and his way of reading their feelings, returned to him most fittingly by the cows perceiving the presence of the treachery. "He heard what his first cow had said; and the next entering she also said likewise."

After this we find a change; instead of the simple and natural narrative, full of human feeling, and without a touch of impossibility, every subsequent episode involves the supernatural; Ra creating a wide water, the extraction of the soul of Bata, his miraculous wife, and all the transformations--these have nothing in common with the style or ideas of the earlier tale.

Whence this later tangle came, and how much of it is drawn from other sources, we can hardly hope to explain from the fragments of literature that we have. But strangely there is a parallel which is close enough to suggest that the patchwork is due to popular mythology. In the myths of Phrygia we meet with Atys or Attis, of whom varying legends are told.

Among these we glean that he was a shepherd, beautiful and chaste; that he fled from corruption; that he mutilated himself; lastly he died under a tree, and afterwards was revived. All this is a duplicate of the story of Bata. And looking further, we see parallels to the three subsequent transformations. Drops of blood were shed from the Atys-priest; and Bata, in his first transformation as a bull, sprinkles two drops of blood by the doors of the palace. Again, Atys is identified with a tree, which was cut down and taken into a sanctuary; and Bata in his second transformation is a Persea tree which is cut down and used in building.

Lastly, the mother of Atys is said to have been a virgin, who bore him from placing in her bosom a ripe almond or pomegranate; and in his third transformation Bata is born from a chip of a tree being swallowed by the princess. These resemblances in nearly all the main points are too close and continuous to be a mere chance, especially as such incidents are not found in any other Egyptian tale, nor in few--if any--other cla.s.sical myths. It is not impossible that the names even may have been the same; for Bata, as we write it, was p.r.o.nounced Vata (or Vatiu or Vitiou, as others would vocalise it), and the digamma would disappear in the later Greek form in which we have Atys.

The most likely course seems to have been that, starting with a simple Egyptian tale, the resemblance to the shepherd of the Asiatic myth, led to a Ramesside author improving the story by tacking on the branches of the myth one after another, and borrowing the name. If this be granted, we have here in Bata the earliest indications of the elements of the Atys mysteries, a thousand years before the Greek versions.

Returning now from the general structure to the separate incidents, we note the expression of annoyance where the elder brother "smote twice on his hands." This gesture is very common in Egypt now, the two hands being rapidly slid one past the other, palm to palm, vertically, grating the fingers of one hand over the other; the right hand moving downwards, and the left a little up. This implies that there is nothing, that a thing is worthless, that a desired result has not been attained, or annoyance at want of success; but the latter meanings are now rare, and more latent than otherwise, and this tale points to the gesture being originally one of positive anger, though it has been transferred gradually to express mere negative results.

The valley of the acacia would appear from the indications to have been by the sea, and probably in Syria; perhaps one of the half-desert wadis toward Gaza was in the writer's mind. The idea of Bata taking out his heart, and placing it on the flower of a tree, has seemed hopelessly unintelligible. But it depends on what we are to understand by the heart in Egyptian. Two words are well known for it, _hati_ and _ah;_ and as it is unlikely that these should be mere synonyms, we have a presumption that one of them does not mean the physical heart, but rather the mental heart. We are accustomed to the same mixture of thought; and far the more common usage in English is not to employ the name to express the physical heart, but for the will, as when we say "good-hearted";--for the spring of action, "broken-hearted ";--for the feelings, "hard-hearted";--for the pa.s.sions, "an affair of the heart";--or for the vigour, as when a man in nature or in act is "hearty" The Egyptian, with his metaphysical mind, took two different words where we only use one; and when we read of placing the heart _(hati)_ out of a man, we are led at once by the a.n.a.logy of beliefs in other races to understand this as the vitality or soul. In the "Golden Bough" Mr. Frazer has explained this part of natural metaphysics; and in this, and the following points, I freely quote from that work as a convenient text-book. The soul or vitality of a man is thought of as separable from the body at will, and therefore communicable to other objects or positions. In those positions it cannot be harmed by what happens to the body, which is therefore deathless for the time. But if the external seat of the soul be attacked or destroyed, the man immediately dies. This is ill.u.s.trated from the Norse, Saxons, Celts, Italians, Greeks, Kabyles, Arabs, Hindus, Malays, Mongolians, Tartars, Magyars, and Slavonians. It may well, then, be considered as a piece of inherent psychology: and following this interpretation, I have rendered "heart" in this sense "soul" in the translation.

The Nine G.o.ds who meet Bata are one of the great cycles of divinities, which were differently reckoned in various places. Khnumu is always the formative G.o.d, who makes man upon the potter's wheel, as in the scene in the temple of Luqsor. And even in natural birth it was Khnumu who "gave strength to the limbs," as in the earlier "Tales of the Magicians." The character of the wife of Bata is a very curious study. The total absence of the affections in her was probably designed as in accord with her non-natural formation, as she could not inherit aught from human parents. Ambition appears as the only emotion of this being; her attacks on the transformations of Bata are not due to dislike, but only to fear that he should claim her removal from her high station; she "feared exceedingly for the words that her husband had spoken to her." Her Lilith nature is incapable of any craving but that for power.

The action here of the seven Hathors we have noticed in the remarks on the previous tale of the Doomed Prince. The episode of the sea is very strange; and if we need find some rationalising account of it, we might suppose it to be a mythical form of a raid of pirates, who, not catching the woman, carried off something of hers, which proved an object of contention in Egypt. But such renderings are unlikely, and we may the rather expect to find some explanation in a mythological parallel.

The carrying of the lock of hair to Pharaoh, and his proclaiming a search for the owner, is plainly an early form of the story of the little slipper, whose owner is sought by the king. The point that she could not be caught except by setting another woman to tempt her with ornaments, antic.i.p.ates the modern novelist's saying, "Set a woman to catch a woman."

The sudden death of Bata, so soon as the depository of his soul was destroyed, is a usual feature in such tales about souls. But it is only in the Indian forms quoted by Mr. Frazer that there is any revival of the dead; and in no case is there any transformation like that of Bata.

Perhaps none but an Egyptian or a Chinese would have credited Anpu with wandering up and down for four years seeking the lost soul. But the idea of returning the soul in water to the man is found as a magic process in North America ("Golden Bough," i. 141).

The first transformation of Bata, into a bull, is clearly drawn from the Apis bull of Memphis. The rejoicings at discovering a real successor of Apis are here, the rejoicings over Bata, who is the Apis bull, distinguished as he says by "bearing every good mark." These marks on the back and other parts were the tokens of the true Apis, who was sought for anxiously through the country on the death of the sacred animal who had lived in the sanctuary. The man who, like Anpu, brought up a true Apis to the temple would receive great rewards and honours.

The scene where the princess demands the grant of a favour is repeated over again by Esther at her banquet, and by the daughter of Herodias. It is the Oriental way of doing business. But the curious incongruity of making a great feast with offerings to the ox before sacrificing it, appears inexplicable until we note the habits of other peoples in slaying their sacred animals at certain intervals. This tale shows us what is stated by Greek authors, that the Egyptians slew the sacred Apis at stated times, or when a new one was discovered with the right marks.

The annual sacrifice of a sacred ram at Thebes shows that the Egyptians were familiar with such an idea. And though it was considered by the writer of this tale as a monstrous act, yet the offerings and festivity which accompanied it are in accordance with the strange fact found by Mariette, that in the three undisturbed Apis burials which he discovered there were only fragments of bone, and in one case a head, carefully embalmed with bitumen and magnificent offerings of jewellery. The divine Apis was eaten as a sacred feast.

The reason that the princess desires the liver is strangely explained by a present belief on the Upper Nile. The Darfuris think that the liver is the seat of the soul ("Golden Bough," ii. 88); and hence if she ate the liver she would destroy the soul of Bata, or prevent it entering any other incarnation.

The next detail is also curiously significant. If a bull was being sacrificed we should naturally suppose the blood would flow, and that a few drops would not be noticed. Here, however, two drops are said to fall, and this was when the bull "was upon the shoulders of the people."

Now it is a very general idea that blood must not be allowed to fall upon the ground; the eastern and southern Africans will not shed the blood of cattle ("Golden Bough," i. 182); and strangely the Australians avoid the falling of blood to the ground by placing the bleeding persons upon the shoulders of other men. This parallel is so close to the Egyptian tale that it seems as if the bull was borne "on the shoulders of the people," that his blood should not fall to the ground; yet in spite of this precaution "he shook his neck, and he threw two drops of blood over against the doors of his majesty." In these drops of blood was the soul of Bata, in spite of the princess having eaten his liver; and we know how among Jews, Arabs, and other peoples, the blood is regarded as the vehicle of the soul or life.

The evidence of tree worship is plainer here than perhaps in any other pa.s.sage of Egyptian literature. The people rejoice for the two Persea trees, "and there were offerings made to them."

The blue crown worn by the king was the war cap of leather covered with scales of copper: it is often found made in dark blue glaze for statuettes, and it seems probable that the copper was superficially sulphurised to tint it. Such head-dress was usually worn by kings when riding in their chariots. The pale gold or electrum here mentioned was the general material for decorating the royal chariot.

The miraculous birth of Bata in his third transformation is, as we have noticed, closely paralleled by the birth of Atys from the almond. The idea at the root of this is that of self-creation or self-existence, as in the usual Egyptian phrase, "bull of his mother."

The king flying up to heaven is a regular expression for his death: "the hawk has soared," "the follower of the G.o.d has met his maker," so Sanehat describes it (see ist series, pp. 97, 98).

This hawk-form of the king may be connected with the hawk bearing the double crown which is perched on the top of the _ka_ name of each king.

That hawk is not Horus, nor even the king deified as Horus, because the emblem of life is given to it by other G.o.ds (as by Set on a lintel of XVIIIth Dynasty from Nubt), and therefore the hawk is the human king who could perish, and not an immortal divinity. Further, this hawk-king is always perched on the top of the drawing of the doorway to the sepulchre which bears the _ka_ name of the king; and when we see the drawings of the _ba_ bird or soul flying down the well to the sepulchre, it appears as if the hawk were the royal _ba_ bird (ordinary men having a _ba_ bird with a human head); and that the well-known first t.i.tle of each king represents the royal soul or _ba_ bird perched on the door of the sepulchre, resting on his way to and from the visit to the corpse below.

The soul or _ba_ of the king at his death thus flew away as a hawk to meet the sun.

The veil drawn over the fate of the inhuman princess is well conceived.

That she should die a sharp death has been foretold; but how Bata should slay the divine creation--his wife--his mother--is a matter that the scribe reserves in silence; we only read that "he judged with her before him, and the great n.o.bles agreed with him." That judgment is best left among the things unwritten.

The strange manner in which we can see incident after incident in the latter part of the tale, each to refer to some ceremony or belief, even imperfect as our knowledge of such must be, and the evidence that the whole being of Bata is a transference of the myth of Atys, must lead us to look on this, the marvellous portion, as woven out of a group of myths, ceremonies, and beliefs which were joined and explained by the formation of such a tale. How far it is due to purely Egyptian ideas, indicated by the Apis bull and the a.n.a.logies in present African beliefs, and how far it is Asiatic and belonging to Atys, it would be premature to decide. But from the weird confusion and mystery of these transformations, we turn back with renewed pleasure to the simple and sweet picture of peasant life, and the beauty of Bata, and we see how true a poet the Egyptian was in feeling and in expression.

XIXth DYNASTY, PTOLEMAIC WRITING

SETNA AND THE MAGIC BOOK

The mighty King User-maat-ra (Ra-meses the Great) had a son named Setna Kha-em-uast who was a great scribe, and very learned in all the ancient writings. And he heard that the magic book of Thoth, by which a man may enchant heaven and earth, and know the language of all birds and beasts, was buried in the cemetery of Memphis. And he went to search for it with his brother An-he-hor-eru; and when they found the tomb of the king's son, Na-nefer-ka-ptah, son of the king of Upper and Lower Egypt, Mer-neb-ptah, Setna opened it and went in.

Now in the tomb was Na-nefer-ka-ptah, and with him was the _ka_ of his wife Ahura; for though she was buried at Koptos, her _ka_ dwelt at Memphis with her husband, whom she loved. And Setna saw them seated before their offerings, and the book lay between them. And Na-nefer-ka-ptah said to Setna, "Who are you that break into my tomb in this way?" He said, "I am Setna, son of the great King User-maat-ra, living for ever, and I come for that book which I see between you." And Na-nefer-ka-ptah said, "It cannot be given to you." Then said Setna, "But I will carry it away by force."

Then Ahura said to Setna, "Do not take this book; for it will bring trouble on you, as it has upon us. Listen to what we have suffered for it."

"We were the two children of the King Mer-neb-ptah, and he loved us very much, for he had no others; and Na-nefer-ka-ptah was in his palace as heir over all the land. And when we were grown, the king said to the queen, 'I will marry Na-nefer-ka-ptah to the daughter of a general, and Ahura to the son of another general.' And the queen said, 'No, he is the heir, let him marry his sister, like the heir of a king, none other is fit for him.' And the king said, 'That is not fair; they had better be married to the children of the general.'

"And the queen said, 'It is you who are not dealing rightly with me.'

And the king answered, 'If I have no more than these two children, is it right that they should marry one another? I will marry Na-nefer-ka-ptah to the daughter of an officer, and Ahura to the son of another officer.

It has often been done so in our family.'

"And at a time when there was a great feast before the king, they came to fetch me to the feast. And I was very troubled, and did not behave as I used to do. And the king said to me, 'Ahura, have you sent some one to me about this sorry matter, saying, "Let me be married to my elder brother"? 'I said to him, 'Well, let me marry the son of an officer, and he marry the daughter of another officer, as it often happens so in our family.' I laughed, and the king laughed. And the king told the steward of the palace, 'Let them take Ahura to the house of Na-nefer-ka-ptah to-night, and all kinds of good things with her.' So they brought me as a wife to the house of Na-nefer-ka-ptah; and the king ordered them to give me presents of silver and gold, and things from the palace.