The Admonitions of Ipuwer

Ipuwer Papyrus, officially Papyrus Leiden I 344 recto

In the early 19th Century a papyrus, dating from the end of the Middle Kingdom, was found in Egypt. It was taken to the Leiden Museum in Holland and interpreted by A.H. Gardiner in 1909. The complete papyrus can be found in the book Admonitions of an Egyptian from a heiratic papyrus in Leiden. The papyrus describes violent upheavals in Egypt, starvation, drought, escape of slaves (with the wealth of the Egyptians), and death throughout the land. The papyrus was written by an Egyptian named Ipuwer and appears to be an eyewitness account of the effects of the Exodus plagues from the perspective of an average Egyptian. Below are excerpts from the papyrus together with their parallels in the Book of Exodus.

The Book of the Dead – Papyrus of Ani

THE PAPYRUS OF ANI,
Royal Scribe of the Divine Offerings of all the Gods

commonly known as,

THE BOOK OF THE DEAD

Based on the Facsimile Reproduction of 1890,
With colour plates, and the text of the London 1895 edition.

Translated by Dr. E. A. Wallis Budge

[Note: This publication is in actuality a cannibalised version of two editions of this work, the one containing a complete reproduction of the plates of the Papyrus of Ani in colour, the other the text as it appears in this papyrus.
To make it more readable the description of the plates and vignettes have been omitted, as well as Budge’s interpolations of texts from various papyri other than Ani’s, and his over elaborate footnotes.]

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

W. M. Flinders Petrie: Tales of the Magicians

One day, when King Khufu reigned over all the land, he said to his chancellor, who stood before him, “Go call me my sons and my councillors, that I may ask of them a thing.” And his sons and his councillors came and stood before him, and he said to them, “Know ye a man who can tell me tales of the deeds of the magicians?”

Khafra’s Tale

Then the royal son Khafra stood forth and said, “I will tell thy majesty a tale of the days of thy forefather Nebka, the blessed; of what came to pass when he went into the temple of Ptah of Ankhtaui.”

So begins one of many tales told to King Khufu by his sons, among many other tales of ‘folklore,’ as collected and translated by W.M. Flinder Petrie. These tales are beautifully illustrated by Tristan Ellis and were published in 1899 as two series, as the Egyptian tales, translated from the papyri. Petrie writes in his introduction: ‘It is strange that while literature occupies so much attention as at present, and while fiction is the largest division of our book-work, the oldest literature and fiction of the world should yet have remained unpresented to English readers. The tales of ancient Egypt have appeared collectively only in French, in the charming volume of Maspero’s “Contes Populaires”; while some have been translated into English at scattered times in volumes of the “Records of the Past.” But research moves forward; and translations that were excellent twenty years ago may now be largely improved, as we attain more insight into the language.’

Presented here then, is W. M. Flinders Petrie’s Egyptian Tales.