The Tale of Sinuhe: and Other Ancient Egyptian Poems 1940-1640 B.C.

“Figs were in it [this land], and grapes;

its wine was more copious than its water;

great its honey, plentiful its moringa-oil,

with all kinds of fruit on its trees.”

The details of this list illustrate the prosperity that Sinuhe is granted from the king in the foreign land where he takes residence. The inversion of the natural word order, as here, where the object of the sentence is given the subject’s place in the sentence, is a rhetorical device called anastrophe; the position of being first in the sentence adds emphasis to the good things Sinuhe has been granted. The inversion of typical word order, however, also reflects that he is in a foreign land, where many things are the opposite of what he knew in Egypt.

“Surely You will let me see the place where my heart still stays!

What matters more than my being buried in the land where I was born?”

The Tale moves through several modes, including narrative and, in this passage, a prayer that addresses the king as a divine being. Sinuhe’s lament is in keeping with a broader elegiac tone that saturates the Middle Kingdom poetry, but the theme of his tale is the sorrow of the exile, whose heart is in his homeland. His concern that his death conform with the conventions of appropriate burial expresses the Egyptian worldview that life on earth is preparation for a final judgment that will admit one to the afterlife, a reward for the sorrows a person has suffered.

“For you are a father to the orphan

and a husband to the widow,

a brother to the divorced,

an apron to the motherless.

Let me make your name in this land, with every good law:

Leader free from selfishness!

Great one free from baseness!

Destroyer of Falsehood! Creator of Truth!”

With this example of parallelism in the petition by the peasant to the high steward, one sees the charitable acts that defined great men and the strong emphasis placed on Truth, Wisdom, and Justice in Egyptian society. The peasant’s plea reflects the value of reputation and fame in the memory surrounding one’s name, and the titles reveal the greatest values of Egyptian society: defending and upholding truth, which involves adhering to justice.

“Doing Truth is the breath of life.”

This exhortation, as the peasant pleads for the high steward to redress the crime done him, lays out the central philosophy that grounded the Egyptian worldview. The greatest good was truth or Maat and on this action, as the metaphor suggests, rests one’s fate in the mortal realm and in the afterlife.

“Steer according to the sail!

Remove the torrent to do Truth!

Beware turning back while at the tiller!

[…] Drift not, but steer!”

The image of ships and steering is often used as a metaphor for just administration and right action. Ironically, the peasant is here appealing for justice from a higher authority by instructing him, with these short imperative statements, on how he ought to behave.

“A man’s utterance saves him.

His speech turns anger away from him.”

These short epigrams are scattered throughout the tales as well as the discourses and teachings. This one alludes to the instructive value of speech, lending the weight of authority even to fictional tales and conveying the cultural values of the time. Such sentiments invoke The Power of Words and Storytelling.

“I shall have them bring you laudanum and malabathrum, terebinth and balsam,

and the incense of the temple estates with which every God is content.

I shall tell what has happened to me, as what I have seen of your power.”

This passage in which the shipwrecked sailor addresses the magical serpent captures two important themes that pervade the poetry: securing loyalties and position through appropriate demonstrations of respect—here, the valuable spices given, and incense burned as offerings to the gods—and also the power of words and storytelling. The passage is ironic, as the serpent has previously advised the sailor to prize his home, family, wife, and children as the greatest rewards of life. The “I shall” is an example of anaphora that appears frequently throughout the poetry, adding emphasis and suggesting an aspect of oral performance.

“The heart of your Majesty will gain relief

at seeing them row a rowing trip,

upstream and downstream.

And you’ll see the beautiful pools of your lake-land.

And you’ll see its countryside and its beautiful banks. Your heart will gain relief by this.”

The Middle Kingdom poetry displays many sophisticated literary devices, often working together. The repetition here of the heart’s relief and the anaphora of “you’ll see” frame the parallel images of the river and the countryside on its banks, while the brief juxtaposition of “upstream and downstream” lends a sense of completion to his majesty’s predicted delight.

“And this child slipped out onto Her arms,

as a child of one cubit, with strong bones,

the appearance of whose limbs was gold,

whose head-cloth was true lapis lazuli.”

This passage appears three times in the tale, describing the birth of each of the triplets born to the priest’s wife. Inside a tale about magical words, these appear to be a sort of spell describing a child who will have magical or superhuman qualities. Lapis lazuli is a semi-precious stone prized for its deep blue color, and gold is the most precious of metals.

“And the river of Egypt is dry,

so that water is crossed on foot;

water will be sought for ships to sail on,

for its course has become a sandbank.

The bank will be a flood,

and the water’s place will be what was once the bank’s.”

Describing what he sees as the state of affairs in Egypt, the sage Neferti uses the device of synecdoche to make the Nile, its all-important river, stand in for the country as a whole. In depicting the river as dry, thus halting commerce, and the bank as flooding, Neferti uses this inversion to suggest the natural order has broken down.

“A king from the south will come,

called Ameny.

He is the son of a woman of Bowland;

he is a child of Southern Egypt.

He will take the White Crown; he will uplift the Red Crown. He will unite the Two Powers.”

This bit of propaganda, placed in the mouth of the sage speaking to King Sneferu of the Fourth Dynasty, legitimizes the rule of Amenemhat I, who unites the Two Kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt and inaugurated the 12th Dynasty of the Middle Kingdom. Neferti pictures Ameny, as he calls him, as rescuing a land that lies in destruction, emphasizing the king as representation of natural and divine order.

“I shall give voice to these things, for my limbs are weighed down.

I am in distress because of my heart.

It is a cause of suffering, yet I keep quiet about it!”

Many of the speakers in the discourses are moved by suffering to comment on what they see as wrong with their land, using shared images to suggest the decay of proper order. In Egyptian thought, the heart was the seat of wisdom and knowledge as well as a home for the soul that endured after death (See: Symbols & Motifs). The image of heaviness signifies that he feels pressed to speak.

“Make the West pleasant for me! Is this pain?

Life is a transitory time:

the trees fall.

Trample on evil, put my misery aside!”

These lines show how quickly Egyptian speakers could shift rhetorical modes. The passage offers a maxim or proverbial statement on life, a simple but powerful elegy in “trees fall,” a rhetorical question, and an imperative commanding the soul to prepare the man for death, using the metonym of the west to represent the afterlife. This dialogue shows how easily speakers in the poetry can move between formal and colloquial registers.

“O, but those things that yesterday saw are ruined;

the land is left to its weakness, like flax being pulled up.”

The elegiac tone is common among the pieces included in this volume. This sentiment, written in the later Middle Kingdom, pervades nearly every literary tradition the world over: The good of previous ages has crumbled into decay, and the present is but a shadow of the glorious past. This phrase is repeated in the dialogue, articulating the speaker’s main complaint.

“To [the Royal House] belong grain and barley,

fowl and fish;

to it belong white linen and fine linen,

bronze and oil;

to it belong reed-carpet and mat,

[water-lily] buds and what sheaf—

every good revenue that should arrive in full.”

In contrast to the scenes of destruction which the speaker has painted, he now lists the goods that are used to pay taxes, representing the prosperity of an ordered Egypt and showing what is prized. The interest with revenues to support the administration is a precisely-drawn concern that stands out among the more general, abstract complaints about the lack of truth, wisdom, and justice in the land.

“But no one is strong in the night; no one can fight alone;

no success will come without help.”

Though the king is here speaking of his personal experience of assassination, the metaphor enlarges to a proverb about needing others during struggle, alluding to every person’s place in the social order. The internal rhyme of “night” and “fight,” a result of the translation, alludes to the larger juxtaposition of life and death, an ongoing concern of Egyptian wisdom literature.

“Be skillful with words, and you will be victorious.

The strong arm of the king is his tongue.

Words are stronger than any weapon. No one can get round someone who has a skillful heart.”

This advice from a father king to his son notes the power of words and storytelling, a prevailing theme in the poetry, placing speech above brute force. The exhortations and pronouncements are typical of the teachings, and the heart is here depicted as the seat of wisdom, reflecting its importance as a person’s ruling organ (See: Symbols & Motifs).

“After death a man remains,

and his deeds are placed beside him in a heap […] he is There like a God.”

The teachings define the cultural values dearest to the Middle Kingdom elite, and this passage captures the perception of death. It was important that one’s name be remembered among the living—and his deeds would be remembered with him—but the afterlife was also conceived as a place of freedom, without suffering, where men could live in perfection.

“He is the Sungod under whose governance one lives:

the man under his shade will have great possessions.

He is the Sungod by whose rays one sees:

he illumines the Two Lands more than the sun.”

The speaker captures the importance of the king as a governing figure and associates him with the sun, which gives light and life, reflecting the king as representation of natural and divine order. The Two Lands is a title for Egypt, with its Upper and Lower Kingdoms united at this time. The god rewards those who show proper reverence, showing a concern for decorum that is shared across several of the Middle Kingdom poems.

“Only what God ordains comes about.

Plan to live in deep calmness;

what They give will come by itself.”

This passage captures a curiosity that may be a feature of the original or of the translations: Sometimes God is spoken of as a single entity, and sometimes “They” is used to refer to the pantheon of several Egyptian gods. The teaching formulates a fatalistic pronouncement and simply counsels acceptance of the divine will.

“It is good to speak to the future; it will listen.” “This is teaching a man to speak to the future.

If he listens, he will become an artist of hearing.

This passage captures how the teachings are designed to offer preparation for prosperity and proper behavior. The figure of speech depicting the listener as an “artist of hearing” is unique to this teaching, underlining the power of words and storytelling. The personification of the future as a figure who can communicate back is also unique to this passage, which emphasizes the importance of listening as crucial to the performance of perfect or correct speech.

“I shall make you love writing more than your mother;

I shall make its beauties be shown to you.”

Praise of the virtues of writing is an amusing irony for a written work, but emphasizing the beauty above the practical element gives a legitimizing force to the literature. The suggestion that the scribe will love his work more than his mother exemplifies how emotional attachments are generally subordinate, throughout these poems, to more public advice about duty and prescriptions for behavior.

“A day in school is good for you—

it is for eternity, its works are mountains.”

The advice from the father putting his son in school emphasizes the value of an education. Khety uses images of eternity, and the metaphor comparing scribal works to enduring mountains ennobles the profession of scribe and elevates the function of literature—a self-conscious move for a literary work.