Remarks
Remarks
The Adventures of Sanehat appears to have been a popular tale, as
portions of three copies remain. The first papyrus known (Berlin No.
1) was imperfect at the beginning; but since then a flake of limestone
found in a tomb bore the beginning of the tale, and the same part is
found on a papyrus in the Amherst collection. The main text has been
translated by Chabas ("Le papyrus de Berlin," 37-51), Goodwin, and
Maspero ("Mel. d'arch.," iii. 68, 140, and "Contes Populaire,"
89-130); while the beginning is treated in "Memoires de l'institut
Egyptien," ii. 1-23, and in Proc. S.B.A., 452. The present translation
is mainly based on Mr. Griffith's readings in all cases of difficulty.
This is perhaps the most interesting of all the tales, because it bears
such signs of being written in the times of which it treats, it throws
so much light on the life of the time in Egypt and Syria, and if not a
real narrative, it is at least so probable that it may be accepted
without much difficulty. For my own part, I incline to look on it as
strictly historical; and in the absence of a single point of doubt, I
shall here treat it as seriously as the biographical inscriptions of
the early tombs. Possibly some day the tomb of Sanehat may be found,
and the whole inscription be read complete upon the walls.
The name Sa-nehat means "son of the sycamore," probably from his having
been born, or living, at some place where was a celebrated sacred
sycamore. This was a common tree in ancient, as in modern, Egypt; but an
allusion in the tale, to Sanehat turning his back on the sycamore, when
he was fleeing apparently up the west side of the Delta, makes it
probable that the sycamore was that of Aa-tenen, now Batnun, at the
middle of the west side of the Delta.
The titles given to Sanehat at the opening are of a very high rank, and
imply that he was the son either of the king or of a great noble. And
his position in the queen's household shows him to have been of
importance; the manner in which he is received by the royal family at
the end implying that he was quite familiar with them in early days.
But the great difficulty in the account has been the sudden panic of
Sanehat on hearing of the death of Amenemhat, and no explanation of this
has yet been brought forward. It seems not unlikely that he was a son of
Amenemhat by some concubine. This would at once account for his high
titles--for his belonging to the royal household--for his fear of his
elder brother Usertesen, who might see in him a rival, and try to slay
him after his father's death--for the command to him to leave all his
possessions and family behind him in Syria, as the condition of his
being allowed to return to end his days in Egypt--for his familiar
reception by the royal family, and for the property given to him on his
return.
The date recorded for the death of Sehote-pabra--Amenemhat I., the
founder of the XIIth Dynasty--agrees with the limit of his reign on the
monuments. And the expressions for his death are valuable as showing
the manner in which a king's decease was regarded; under the emblem of
a hawk--the bird of Ra--he flew up and joined the sun.
Sometime before his death Amenemhat had been in retirement; after twenty
years of reign (which was probably rather late in his life, as he seems
to have forced his way to the front as a successful man and founder of a
family) he had associated his son, the first Usertesen, on the throne,
and apparently resigned active life; for in the third year of Usertesen
we find the coregent summoning his court and decreeing the founding of
the temple of Heliopolis without any mention of his father. The old
king, however, lived yet ten years after his retirement, and died (as
this narrative shows us) during an expedition of his son Usertesen.
The time of year mentioned here would fall in about the middle of the
inundation in those days. Hence it seems that the military expeditions
were made after the harvest was secured, and while the country was
under water and the population disengaged from other labour.
The course of Sanehat's flight southward, reaching the Nile at Cairo
after two days' haste, indicates that the army was somewhere west of the
Delta. This would point to its being on the road to the oasis of the
Natron Lakes, which would be the natural course for a body of men
needing water supply. His throwing himself between two bushes to hide
from the army shows that the message came early in the day, otherwise he
would have fled in the dark. He then fled a day's journey to the south,
turning his back on the sycamore, and slept in the open field at
Shi-Seneferu somewhere below the Barrage. The second day he reached the
Nile opposite Old Cairo in the afternoon, and ferried himself over,
passed the quarries at Gebel Mokattam, and the red hill of Gebel Ahmar,
and came to a frontier wall before dark. This cannot have been far from
Old Cairo, by the time; and as Heliopolis was in course of building by
Usertesen, it would be probably on the desert near there, for the
protection of the town. Passing the desert guards by night he pushed
on and reached Peten, near Belbeis, by dawn, and turned east toward
the valley of Kemur, or Wady Tumilat. Here in his extremity he was
found by the Sati or Asiatics, and rescued. This shows that the
eastern desert was left to the wandering tribes, and was without any
regular government at this period; though all the eastern Delta was
already well in Egyptian hands, as we know by the monuments at
Bubastis, Dedamun, and Tanis.
The land of Adim to which Sanehat fled appears to be the same as Edom or
the southeast corner of Syria. It was evidently near the upper Tenu, or
Rutennu, who seem to have dwelt on the hill country of Palestine. The
hill and the plain of Palestine are so markedly different, that in all
ages they have tended to be held by opposing people. In the time of
Sanehat the upper Tenu who held the hills were opposed to the Tenu in
general who held the plains; later on the Semites of the hills opposed
the Philistines of the plain, and now the _fellah_ of the hills
opposes the Bedawi of the plain. The district of Amuanshi in which
Sanehat settled was a goodly land, bearing figs and grapes and olives,
flowing with wine and honey and oil, yielding barley and wheat without
end, and much cattle. This abundance points rather to the hill country
near Hebron or between there and Belt Jibrin, as this south part of
the hills is notably fertile. The Tenu who came to defy Sanehat, being
in opposition to the upper Tenu, were probably those of the plain; and
the opposition to Sanehat may have arisen from his encroaching on the
fertile plain at the foot of his hills, as he was in the best of the
land "on the border of the next land."
The Egyptian was evidently looked on as being of a superior race by the
Tenu, and his civilisation won for him the confidence which many
wandering Englishmen now find in Africa or Polynesia, like John Dunn.
The set combat of two champions seems--by the large gathering--to have
been a well-recognised custom among the Tenu, while it exactly accords
with Goliath's offer in later times. And raising the shout of victory
on the back of the fallen champion reminds us of David's standing on
Goliath.
The transition from the recital of the Syrian adventures to the petition
to Pharaoh is not marked in the manuscript; but from the construction
the beginning of the petition is evidently at the place here marked. The
manner in which Sanehat appeals to the queen shows how well he must have
been known to her in his former days.
The decree in reply to Sanehat is in the regular style of royal
decrees of the period. Apparently by a clerical error the scribe has
substituted the name Amenemhat for Userte-sen, but the Horus name and
the throne name leave no doubt that Usertesen I. is intended here. The
tone of the reply is as gracious as possible, according with the
king's character as stated by Sanehat, "He is a friend of great
sweetness, and knows how to gain love." He quite recognises the
inquiries after the queen, and replies concerning her. And then he
assures Sanehat of welcome on his return, and promises him all that he
asks, including a tomb "in the company of the royal children," a full
recognition of his real rank. Incidentally we learn that the Amu
buried their dead wrapped in a sheep's skin; as we also learn, further
on, that they anointed themselves with oil (olive?), wore the hair
long, and slept on the ground.
The funeral that is promised accords with the burials of the XIIth
Dynasty: the gilded case, the head painted blue, and the canopy of
cypress wood, are all known of this period, but would be out of place in
describing a Ramesside burial.
Sanehat's reply is a full course of the usual religious adulation, and
differs in this remarkably from his petition. In fact it is hard to
be certain where his petition begins; possibly the opening of it has
been lost out of the text in copying from a mutilated papyrus; or
possibly it was sent merely as a memorandum of Sanehat's position and
desires, without venturing to address it personally to the king; or
even it may have not been allowable then to make such petitions
formally, so as to leave the initiative to the king's free will, just
as it is not allowable nowadays to question royalty, but only to
answer when spoken to.
The proposal to bring forward his fellow-sheikhs as witnesses of his
unabated loyalty is very curious, and seems superfluous after
Usertesen's assurances. Beyond Abisha of the Amu at Beni Hasan, these
are the only early personal names of Syrians that we know. The Fenkhu in
this connection can hardly be other than the Phoenicians; and, if so,
this points to their being already established in southern Syria at
this date. But these chiefs were not allowed to come forward; and it
seems to have been the policy of Egypt to keep the Syrians off as much
as possible, not a single man who came with Sanehat being allowed to
cross the frontier. The allusion to the Tenu belonging to Pharaoh,
like his dogs, is peculiarly fitting to this period, as the dog seems
to have been more familiarly domesticated in the XIth and XIIth
Dynasties than at any other age, and dogs are often then represented
on the funereal steles, even with their names.
The expression for strangeness--"as a man of the Delta sees himself at
the cataract, as a man of the plain who sees himself in the deserts"--is
true to this day. Nothing upsets an Egyptian's self-reliance like going
back a few miles into the desert; and almost any man of the cultivated
plain will flee with terror if he finds himself left alone far in the
desert, or even taken to the top of the desert hills..
We learn incidentally that the Egyptian frontier, even in the later
years of Usertesen I., had not been pushed beyond the Wady Tumilat; for
Sanehat travels south to the Roads of Horus, where he finds the frontier
garrison, and leaves his Syrian friends; and there laden boats meet him,
showing that it must have been somewhere along a waterway from the Nile.
The abasement of Sanehat might well be due to natural causes, beside the
reverence for the divine person of the king. The Egyptian court must
have seemed oppressively splendid, with the brilliant and costly
workmanship of Usertesen, to one who had lived a half-wild life for so
many years; and, more than that, the recalling of all his early days and
habits and friendships would overwhelm his mind and make it difficult to
collect his thoughts.
Sanehat's appearance was so much changed by his long hair, his age, and
his strange dress, that his former mistress and companions could not
recognise him. The use of collars and sceptres in the song and dance
is not clear to us. The sistra were, of course, to beat or rattle in
time with the song; the sceptres or wands were perhaps the same as the
engraved wands of ivory common in the XIIth Dynasty, or of blue glazed
ware in XVIIIth, and would be used to wave or beat time with; but the
use of the collar and counterpoise, or _menat,_ is unexplained, though
figures of dancers are shown holding a collar and _menat,_ and such
objects were found buried in the ceremonial foundation deposit of
Tahutmes III. at Koptos.
This song of the princesses is clearly in parallel phrases. First are
four wishes for the king and queen, in four lines. Second, an ascription
of wisdom and power, in two lines. Third, a comparison of the king to
Ra, and of the queen to the great goddess, in two lines. Fourth, an
ascription of righting power. Fifth, a petition for Sanehat, winding up
with the statement of fear inspired by the king, as explaining
Sanehat's abasement. To this the king responds by reassuring Sanehat,
and promising him position and wealth.
The account of Sanehat's renewal of his old national ways can best be
appreciated by any one who has lived a rough life for a time and then
comes back to civilisation. Doubtless these comforts were all the more
grateful to him in his old age, when he was weary of his unsettled life.
In the preparation of his tomb it is stated to have been a pyramid, with
rock-cut well chamber, and built of bricks above. This just accords
with the construction of the pyramids of the XIIth Dynasty.
The last phrase implies that this was composed during Sanehat's life;
and such a life would be so remarkable that this biography might be
prepared with good reason. Also it is very unlikely that a mere
story-teller would have dropped the relation without describing his
grand funeral which was promised to him. From suddenly stopping at the
preparation of the tomb, without going further, we have a strong
presumption that this was a true narrative, written at Sanehat's
dictation, and probably intended to be inscribed on his tomb wall. In
any case, we have here an invaluable picture of life in Palestine and
in Egypt, and the relations of the two countries, at an epoch before
the time of Abraham, and not paralleled by any other document until
more than a thousand years later.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Egyptian Tales, First Series, IVth To
XIIth Dynasty, by W. M. Flinders Petrie