page_title: Ancient Egyptian literature
section_title: Narrative tales and stories
hierarchical_section_title: Ancient Egyptian literature / Literary genres and subjects / Narrative tales and stories
caption_attribution_description: English: A relief of pharaoh Amenemhet I before Egypt's deities, from his funerary temple at El-Lisht. Amenemhet I was the founder of the 12th dynasty of Egypt. The relief is now located in the Metropolitan Museum of New York.
context_page_description: Ancient Egyptian literature was written in the Egyptian language from ancient Egypt's pharaonic period until the end of Roman domination. It represents the oldest corpus of Egyptian literature. Along with Sumerian literature, it is considered the world's earliest literature.
  Writing in ancient Egypt—both hieroglyphic and hieratic—first appeared in the late 4th millennium BC during the late phase of predynastic Egypt. By the Old Kingdom, literary works included funerary texts, epistles and letters, hymns and poems, and commemorative autobiographical texts recounting the careers of prominent administrative officials. It was not until the early Middle Kingdom that a narrative Egyptian literature was created. This was a "media revolution" which, according to Richard B. Parkinson, was the result of the rise of an intellectual class of scribes, new cultural sensibilities about individuality, unprecedented levels of literacy, and mainstream access to written materials. However, it is possible that the overall literacy rate was less than one percent of the entire population.
context_section_description: The genre of "tales and stories" is probably the least represented genre from surviving literature of the Middle Kingdom and Middle Egyptian. In Late Egyptian literature, "tales and stories" comprise the majority of surviving literary works dated from the Ramesside Period of the New Kingdom into the Late Period. Major narrative works from the Middle Kingdom include the Tale of the Court of King Cheops, King Neferkare and General Sasenet, The Eloquent Peasant, Story of Sinuhe, and Tale of the shipwrecked sailor. The New Kingdom corpus of tales includes the Quarrel of Apepi and Seqenenre, The Taking of Joppa, Tale of the doomed prince, Tale of Two Brothers, and the Report of Wenamun. Stories from the 1st millennium BC written in Demotic include the story of the Famine Stela (set in the Old Kingdom, although written during the Ptolemaic dynasty) and short story cycles of the Ptolemaic and Roman periods that transform well-known historical figures such as Khaemweset (Nineteenth Dynasty) and Inaros (First Persian Period) into fictional, legendary heroes. This is contrasted with many stories written in Late Egyptian, whose authors frequently chose divinities as protagonists and mythological places as settings.
  Parkinson defines tales as "...non-commemorative, non-functional, fictional narratives" that usually employ the key word "narrate" (sdd). He describes it as the most open-ended genre, since the tales often incorporate elements of other literary genres. For example, Morenz describes the opening section of the foreign adventure tale Sinuhe as a "...funerary self-presentation" that parodies the typical autobiography found on commemorative funerary stelas. The autobiography is for a courier whose service began under Amenemhat I. Simpson states that the death of Amenemhat I in the report given by his son, coregent, and successor Senusret I (r. 1971–1926 BC) to the army in the beginning of Sinuhe is "...excellent propaganda". Morenz describes The shipwrecked sailor as an expeditionary report and a travel-narrative myth. Simpson notes the literary device of the story within a story in The shipwrecked sailor may provide "...the earliest examples of a narrative quarrying report". With the setting of a magical desert island, and a character who is a talking snake, The shipwrecked sailor may also be classified as a fairy tale. While stories like Sinuhe, Taking of Joppa, and the Doomed prince contain fictional portrayals of Egyptians abroad, the Report of Wenamun is most likely based on a true account of an Egyptian who traveled to Byblos in Phoenicia to obtain cedar for shipbuilding during the reign of Ramesses XI.
  Narrative tales and stories are most often found on papyri, but partial and sometimes complete texts are found on ostraca. For example, Sinuhe is found on five papyri composed during the Twelfth and Thirteenth dynasties. This text was later copied numerous times on ostraca during the Nineteenth and Twentieth dynasties, with one ostraca containing the complete text on both sides.
caption: A raised-relief depiction of Amenemhat I accompanied by deities; the death of Amenemhat I is reported by his son Senusret I in the Story of Sinuhe.
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