Abstract
Known as the home of the short story ancient Egyptian narratives have entertained many people for millennia, and, not surprisingly, a number of these narratives resonate with various biblical narratives. Indeed the Bible states that as the Israelites left Egypt in the Exodus, they took borrowed objects with them (Exod 12:35) which logically would have included intangible items like loanwords and concepts gained from living in the Egyptian intellectual and moral environment. Perhaps the most notable of these, and possibly the best known to biblical scholars, is the 19th dynasty “Tale of Two Brothers” from the Papyrus d’Orbiney (BM 10183) due to its similarities with the narrative of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife in Genesis 39. Other tales also appear to be reflected in various biblical materials. Given, however, the worldwide appearances of similar tales and tale motifs to those of these two cultures, one must ask if the similarities between the Egyptian and biblical really represent direct borrowing from or influence of Egypt. Whatever the answer may be, the significance of the Joseph story lies in its incorporation of a memory of the Israelites’ descent into Egypt.
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Notes
- 1.
The hieroglyphic transcription of the original hieratic in which the story was written appears in Alan Gardiner’s Late Egyptian Stories (Gardiner 1981), as does the transcription for the Doomed Prince mentioned below.
- 2.
Also known as the Tale of King Cheop’s Court (Parkinson 1997: 102–127).
- 3.
- 4.
Significantly and commonly overlooked in discussions of this tale is that both brothers are identifiable ancient Egyptian deities (Hollis 2008: 47–87). In fact in the later part of the tale, Anubis acts in his role as mortuary deity (Hollis 2008: 74–85, 168). In addition, it is commonly thought that the nameless wife is also a deity, perhaps Hathor in her more dangerous modality (Hollis 2008: 98, 152–156, 162, 192).
- 5.
All translations related to Two Brothers are mine.
- 6.
Death was a possible consequence of adultery as the tale of Webaoner, the second tale from the Westcar Papyrus, shows in its report of the death of both Webaoner’s adulterous wife and her paramour (Simpson 2003a: 14–16).
- 7.
This action relates Bata to Osiris whose phallus was lost when Seth dismembered him (Hollis 2008: 109).
- 8.
The fulfillment of this type of prediction occurs very commonly in myths and tales to the extent that the knowledgeable person can anticipate the outcome.
- 9.
Three actions to gain a goal commonly occur in traditional narratives worldwide.
- 10.
It had been published in facsimile form in Samuel Birch’s Select Papyri in Hieratic Character from the Collections of the British Museum, Part II (Birch 1860).
- 11.
Moldenke reiterated these comments in 1895 (Moldenke 1895).
- 12.
To make comparisons of traditional tales and their constituent motifs both within and across cultures, scholars use appropriate collections of indices of tale types and motifs. The oldest and best known of these comes from the work of Stith Thompson, who translated and enlarged the original work on tale types by Antti Aarne when he published The Types of the Folktale (Thompson 1964) as well as developed the well-known Motif-Index of Folk Literature (Thompson 1955–58). He defines a tale type as “a traditional tale that has an independent existence,” a complete narrative (Thompson 1977: 415), while a motif is “the smallest element of a tale have a power to persist in tradition” (Thompson 1977: 415). Interestingly, in both publications he used the Egyptian Tale of Two Brothers as the defining example, clearly taking it from his 1946 volume The Folktale in which he provided a complete set of tale types and motifs present in Two Brothers (Thompson 1977: 275–276 and 482 [AaTh 315B* = later AaTh 318]), also outlined in my work The Ancient Egyptian “Tale of Two Brothers” (Hollis 2008: 22, n. 70).
- 13.
Significantly, like the motif K2111, Thompson’s description of AaTh 318: Faithless Wife: “Plots with paramour against the life of her husband” (Thompson 1964: 112) is not strictly accurate for Two Brothers.
- 14.
The Sumerian tablets with this narrative are known from the eighteenth century BC, but are likely of earlier origin (George 1999: 140–141, 166).
- 15.
For an in-depth discussion of Ishtar’s proposal, see Tzvi Abusch’s article on Tablet Six (Abusch 1986).
- 16.
Potiphar exemplifies this action. As Hillers notes, several narratives including the Egyptian Two Brothers involve self-castration or castration, for example, the tales of Kombabos/Astronoe and Eshmun/Stratonice (Hillers 1973: 75–76). For a recent discussion of this motif, related to motif T418: The Chaste Youth and his Lascivious Stepmother, focusing on the trans-Asiatic areas, see William Propp’s paper on the Eunuch Steward (Propp 2013). In addition, there is at least one African example in which the hero’s phallus is severed by the aggrieved male (Paulme 1963: 11–20). William F. Hansen has documented 20 occurrences of this tale type in classical literature Ariadne’s Thread (Hansen 2002: 332–352).
- 17.
All biblical quotations come from the Jewish Publication Society’s The Jewish Study Bible (Berlin and Brettler 1999).
- 18.
- 19.
Lectures in Harvard University Course, Humanities 9a, Early and Oral Literature, Spring 1980.
- 20.
Propp’s analysis shows the existence of 31 functions, that is, actions, and 7 dramatis personae who perform them (Propp 1968). In International Folkloristics, Alan Dundes provides a brief discussion and simple summary of Propp’s functions along with a short discussion of the principles involved (Dundes 1999: 119–130).
- 21.
This description reminds one of the biblical concept that the promised land was to be a land flowing with milk and honey (e.g., Exod 3:8; 33:3).
- 22.
King identifies the helper figure as divine as is the case for the specific political narratives with which he deals(King 1987: 584), but he overlooks the reality that there are helper figures in many tales who are not divine.
- 23.
- 24.
Dundes presents a succinct discussion of van Gennep’s ideas and an extract of his work in International Folkloristics (Dundes 1999: 99–108).
- 25.
- 26.
The birth of the divine kings from the wife of a sun priest may possibly be read as divine procreation.
- 27.
Among the various commentaries on the parallels, see discussions by Harry Hoffner (Hoffner 1968), Philip J. King (King 2007: 351–352), and Azzan Yadin (Yadin 2004: 380). While one might analyze the two fights as each reflecting Motif G512, Ogre killed, a major difference between them centers around the context. David’s challenge is part of a battle of his people against the Philistines, termed a “contest of champions” by Yadin (2004: 379), which occurs in a physical space between the two armies in place of whole armies fighting, while Sinuhe’s combat is unrelated to any army action, for the Retenu champion approaches Sinuhe in his tent, simply challenging him to fight (Sinuhe B 110).
- 28.
For this motif, see http://www.ruthenia.ru/folklore/thompson/index.htm, though neither tale is included as part of the Thompson index. Curiously much from the ancient world as well as from the Bible appears to be absent in Thompson’s indices, so his use of the Egyptian Tale of Two Brothers seems to constitute an exception.
- 29.
The younger brother’s rise over the elder brother(s) appears ubiquitously in traditional tales.
- 30.
For an excellent discussion of origins, albeit in relation to ballads but nevertheless pertinent, see Alan Bold’s discussion on ballads (Bold 1979: Ch. 1).
- 31.
Such a discussion of the biblical origins along these lines might be very interesting. Might it be possible to separate Genesis 39 from its Egyptian analog, perhaps considering Tablet VI of the Epic of Gilgamesh in light of the putative Mesopotamian origin of the Abraham?
- 32.
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Hollis, S.T. (2015). Out of Egypt: Did Israel’s Exodus Include Tales?. In: Levy, T., Schneider, T., Propp, W. (eds) Israel's Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective. Quantitative Methods in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04768-3_16
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