Egyptian Tales, Second Series
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W. M. Flinders Petrie >> Egyptian Tales, Second Series
The description of Bata is one of the most beautiful character-drawings
in the past. The self-denial and sweet innocence of the lad, his
sympathy with his cattle, "listening to all that they said," and
allowing them their natural wishes and ways, is touchingly expressed.
And those who know Egypt will know that Bata still lives there--several
Batas I have known myself. His sweetness of manner, his devotion, his
untiringly earnest work, his modesty, his quietness, makes Bata to be
one of the most charming friends. Bata I have met in many places, Bata I
have loved as one of the flowers of human nature, and Bata I hope often
to meet again in divers forms and varied incarnations among the _fellah_
lads of Egypt.
The touches of description of Bata are slight, and yet so pointed. His
growing to be an excellent worker; his return at evening laden with all
the produce, just as may be seen now any evening as the lads come in
bearing on their backs large bundles of vegetables for the house, and of
fodder for the home-driven cattle; his sleeping with his cattle in the
stable; his zeal in rising before dawn to make the daily bread for his
brother, ready to give him when he arose; and then his driving out the
cattle to pasture--all contrasts with his elder brother's life of ease.
The making of the bread was rightly the duty of Anpu's wife; she ought
to have risen to grind the corn long before dawn, as the millstones may
now be heard grinding in the dark, morning by morning; she ought to have
baked the bread ready for the toiler who spent his whole day in the
field. But it was the ever-willing Bata who did the work of the house as
well as the work of the farm. "Behold the spirit of a god was in him."
The driving in of the cattle at night is still a particular feature of
Egyptian life. About an hour before sunset the tether ropes are drawn in
the fields, and the cattle file off, with a little child for a
leader--if any; the master gathers up the produce that is required, some
buffalo is laden with a heap of clover, or a lad carries it on his back,
for the evening feed of the cattle, and all troop along the path through
the fields and by the canal. For two or three miles the road becomes
more and more crowded with the flocks driven into it from every field, a
long haze of dust lies glowing in the crimson glory of sunset over the
stream of cows and buffaloes, sheep and goats, that pour into the
village. Each beast well knows his master and his crib, and turns in at
the familiar gate to the stable under the house, or by the side of the
hut; and there all spend the night. Not a hoof is left out in the field;
the last belated stragglers come in while the gleam of amber still edges
the night-blue sky behind the black horizon. Then the silent fields lie
under the brightening moon, glittering with dew, untrodden and deserted.
It is not cold or climate that leads men to this custom, but the
unsafety of a country bordered by unseen deserts, whence untold men may
suddenly appear and ravage all the plain.
The ploughing scene next follows, on "the land coming out from the
water"; as the inundation goes down the well-known banks and ridges
appear, "the back-bones of the land," as they were so naturally called;
and when the surface is firm enough to walk on--with many a pool and
ditch still full--the ploughing begins on the soft dark clay.
The catastrophe of the story--the black gulf of deceit that suddenly
opens under Bata's feet--has always been seen to be strikingly like the
story of Joseph. And--as we have noticed--there is good reason for the
early part of this tale belonging to about the beginning of the XVIIIth
Dynasty, so it is very closely allied in time as well as character to
the account of Joseph. In this part again is one of those pointed
touches, which show the power of the poet--for a poem in prose this
is--"her heart knew him with the knowledge of youth."
On reaching the mistaken revenge of Anpu, we see the sympathy of Bata
with his cattle, and his way of reading their feelings, returned to him
most fittingly by the cows perceiving the presence of the treachery. "He
heard what his first cow had said; and the next entering she also said
likewise."
After this we find a change; instead of the simple and natural
narrative, full of human feeling, and without a touch of impossibility,
every subsequent episode involves the supernatural; Ra creating a wide
water, the extraction of the soul of Bata, his miraculous wife, and all
the transformations--these have nothing in common with the style or
ideas of the earlier tale.
Whence this later tangle came, and how much of it is drawn from other
sources, we can hardly hope to explain from the fragments of literature
that we have. But strangely there is a parallel which is close enough to
suggest that the patchwork is due to popular mythology. In the myths of
Phrygia we meet with Atys or Attis, of whom varying legends are told.
Among these we glean that he was a shepherd, beautiful and chaste; that
he fled from corruption; that he mutilated himself; lastly he died under
a tree, and afterwards was revived. All this is a duplicate of the story
of Bata. And looking further, we see parallels to the three subsequent
transformations. Drops of blood were shed from the Atys-priest; and
Bata, in his first transformation as a bull, sprinkles two drops of
blood by the doors of the palace. Again, Atys is identified with a tree,
which was cut down and taken into a sanctuary; and Bata in his second
transformation is a Persea tree which is cut down and used in building.
Lastly, the mother of Atys is said to have been a virgin, who bore him
from placing in her bosom a ripe almond or pomegranate; and in his third
transformation Bata is born from a chip of a tree being swallowed by the
princess. These resemblances in nearly all the main points are too close
and continuous to be a mere chance, especially as such incidents are not
found in any other Egyptian tale, nor in few--if any--other classical
myths. It is not impossible that the names even may have been the same;
for Bata, as we write it, was pronounced Vata (or Vatiu or Vitiou, as
others would vocalise it), and the digamma would disappear in the later
Greek form in which we have Atys.
The most likely course seems to have been that, starting with a simple
Egyptian tale, the resemblance to the shepherd of the Asiatic myth, led
to a Ramesside author improving the story by tacking on the branches of
the myth one after another, and borrowing the name. If this be granted,
we have here in Bata the earliest indications of the elements of the
Atys mysteries, a thousand years before the Greek versions.
Returning now from the general structure to the separate incidents, we
note the expression of annoyance where the elder brother "smote twice on
his hands." This gesture is very common in Egypt now, the two hands
being rapidly slid one past the other, palm to palm, vertically, grating
the fingers of one hand over the other; the right hand moving downwards,
and the left a little up. This implies that there is nothing, that a
thing is worthless, that a desired result has not been attained, or
annoyance at want of success; but the latter meanings are now rare, and
more latent than otherwise, and this tale points to the gesture being
originally one of positive anger, though it has been transferred
gradually to express mere negative results.
The valley of the acacia would appear from the indications to have been
by the sea, and probably in Syria; perhaps one of the half-desert wadis
toward Gaza was in the writer's mind. The idea of Bata taking out his
heart, and placing it on the flower of a tree, has seemed hopelessly
unintelligible. But it depends on what we are to understand by the heart
in Egyptian. Two words are well known for it, _hati_ and _ah;_ and as it
is unlikely that these should be mere synonyms, we have a presumption
that one of them does not mean the physical heart, but rather the mental
heart. We are accustomed to the same mixture of thought; and far the
more common usage in English is not to employ the name to express the
physical heart, but for the will, as when we say "good-hearted";--for
the spring of action, "broken-hearted ";--for the feelings,
"hard-hearted";--for the passions, "an affair of the heart";--or for the
vigour, as when a man in nature or in act is "hearty" The Egyptian, with
his metaphysical mind, took two different words where we only use one;
and when we read of placing the heart _(hati)_ out of a man, we are led
at once by the analogy of beliefs in other races to understand this as
the vitality or soul. In the "Golden Bough" Mr. Frazer has explained
this part of natural metaphysics; and in this, and the following points,
I freely quote from that work as a convenient text-book. The soul or
vitality of a man is thought of as separable from the body at will, and
therefore communicable to other objects or positions. In those positions
it cannot be harmed by what happens to the body, which is therefore
deathless for the time. But if the external seat of the soul be attacked
or destroyed, the man immediately dies. This is illustrated from the
Norse, Saxons, Celts, Italians, Greeks, Kabyles, Arabs, Hindus, Malays,
Mongolians, Tartars, Magyars, and Slavonians. It may well, then, be
considered as a piece of inherent psychology: and following this
interpretation, I have rendered "heart" in this sense "soul" in the
translation.
The Nine Gods who meet Bata are one of the great cycles of divinities,
which were differently reckoned in various places. Khnumu is always the
formative god, who makes man upon the potter's wheel, as in the scene in
the temple of Luqsor. And even in natural birth it was Khnumu who "gave
strength to the limbs," as in the earlier "Tales of the Magicians." The
character of the wife of Bata is a very curious study. The total absence
of the affections in her was probably designed as in accord with her
non-natural formation, as she could not inherit aught from human
parents. Ambition appears as the only emotion of this being; her attacks
on the transformations of Bata are not due to dislike, but only to fear
that he should claim her removal from her high station; she "feared
exceedingly for the words that her husband had spoken to her." Her
Lilith nature is incapable of any craving but that for power.
The action here of the seven Hathors we have noticed in the remarks on
the previous tale of the Doomed Prince. The episode of the sea is very
strange; and if we need find some rationalising account of it, we might
suppose it to be a mythical form of a raid of pirates, who, not catching
the woman, carried off something of hers, which proved an object of
contention in Egypt. But such renderings are unlikely, and we may the
rather expect to find some explanation in a mythological parallel.
The carrying of the lock of hair to Pharaoh, and his proclaiming a
search for the owner, is plainly an early form of the story of the
little slipper, whose owner is sought by the king. The point that she
could not be caught except by setting another woman to tempt her with
ornaments, anticipates the modern novelist's saying, "Set a woman to
catch a woman."
The sudden death of Bata, so soon as the depository of his soul was
destroyed, is a usual feature in such tales about souls. But it is only
in the Indian forms quoted by Mr. Frazer that there is any revival of
the dead; and in no case is there any transformation like that of Bata.
Perhaps none but an Egyptian or a Chinese would have credited Anpu with
wandering up and down for four years seeking the lost soul. But the idea
of returning the soul in water to the man is found as a magic process in
North America ("Golden Bough," i. 141).
The first transformation of Bata, into a bull, is clearly drawn from the
Apis bull of Memphis. The rejoicings at discovering a real successor of
Apis are here, the rejoicings over Bata, who is the Apis bull,
distinguished as he says by "bearing every good mark." These marks on
the back and other parts were the tokens of the true Apis, who was
sought for anxiously through the country on the death of the sacred
animal who had lived in the sanctuary. The man who, like Anpu, brought
up a true Apis to the temple would receive great rewards and honours.
The scene where the princess demands the grant of a favour is repeated
over again by Esther at her banquet, and by the daughter of Herodias. It
is the Oriental way of doing business. But the curious incongruity of
making a great feast with offerings to the ox before sacrificing it,
appears inexplicable until we note the habits of other peoples in
slaying their sacred animals at certain intervals. This tale shows us
what is stated by Greek authors, that the Egyptians slew the sacred Apis
at stated times, or when a new one was discovered with the right marks.
The annual sacrifice of a sacred ram at Thebes shows that the Egyptians
were familiar with such an idea. And though it was considered by the
writer of this tale as a monstrous act, yet the offerings and festivity
which accompanied it are in accordance with the strange fact found by
Mariette, that in the three undisturbed Apis burials which he discovered
there were only fragments of bone, and in one case a head, carefully
embalmed with bitumen and magnificent offerings of jewellery. The divine
Apis was eaten as a sacred feast.
The reason that the princess desires the liver is strangely explained by
a present belief on the Upper Nile. The Darfuris think that the liver is
the seat of the soul ("Golden Bough," ii. 88); and hence if she ate the
liver she would destroy the soul of Bata, or prevent it entering any
other incarnation.
The next detail is also curiously significant. If a bull was being
sacrificed we should naturally suppose the blood would flow, and that a
few drops would not be noticed. Here, however, two drops are said to
fall, and this was when the bull "was upon the shoulders of the people."
Now it is a very general idea that blood must not be allowed to fall
upon the ground; the eastern and southern Africans will not shed the
blood of cattle ("Golden Bough," i. 182); and strangely the Australians
avoid the falling of blood to the ground by placing the bleeding persons
upon the shoulders of other men. This parallel is so close to the
Egyptian tale that it seems as if the bull was borne "on the shoulders
of the people," that his blood should not fall to the ground; yet in
spite of this precaution "he shook his neck, and he threw two drops of
blood over against the doors of his majesty." In these drops of blood
was the soul of Bata, in spite of the princess having eaten his liver;
and we know how among Jews, Arabs, and other peoples, the blood is
regarded as the vehicle of the soul or life.
The evidence of tree worship is plainer here than perhaps in any other
passage of Egyptian literature. The people rejoice for the two Persea
trees, "and there were offerings made to them."
The blue crown worn by the king was the war cap of leather covered with
scales of copper: it is often found made in dark blue glaze for
statuettes, and it seems probable that the copper was superficially
sulphurised to tint it. Such head-dress was usually worn by kings when
riding in their chariots. The pale gold or electrum here mentioned was
the general material for decorating the royal chariot.
The miraculous birth of Bata in his third transformation is, as we have
noticed, closely paralleled by the birth of Atys from the almond. The
idea at the root of this is that of self-creation or self-existence, as
in the usual Egyptian phrase, "bull of his mother."
The king flying up to heaven is a regular expression for his death: "the
hawk has soared," "the follower of the god has met his maker," so
Sanehat describes it (see ist series, pp. 97, 98).
This hawk-form of the king may be connected with the hawk bearing the
double crown which is perched on the top of the _ka_ name of each king.
That hawk is not Horus, nor even the king deified as Horus, because the
emblem of life is given to it by other gods (as by Set on a lintel of
XVIIIth Dynasty from Nubt), and therefore the hawk is the human king who
could perish, and not an immortal divinity. Further, this hawk-king is
always perched on the top of the drawing of the doorway to the sepulchre
which bears the _ka_ name of the king; and when we see the drawings of
the _ba_ bird or soul flying down the well to the sepulchre, it appears
as if the hawk were the royal _ba_ bird (ordinary men having a _ba_ bird
with a human head); and that the well-known first title of each king
represents the royal soul or _ba_ bird perched on the door of the
sepulchre, resting on his way to and from the visit to the corpse below.
The soul or _ba_ of the king at his death thus flew away as a hawk to
meet the sun.
The veil drawn over the fate of the inhuman princess is well conceived.
That she should die a sharp death has been foretold; but how Bata should
slay the divine creation--his wife--his mother--is a matter that the
scribe reserves in silence; we only read that "he judged with her before
him, and the great nobles agreed with him." That judgment is best left
among the things unwritten,
The strange manner in which we can see incident after incident in the
latter part of the tale, each to refer to some ceremony or belief, even
imperfect as our knowledge of such must be, and the evidence that the
whole being of Bata is a transference of the myth of Atys, must lead us
to look on this, the marvellous portion, as woven out of a group of
myths, ceremonies, and beliefs which were joined and explained by the
formation of such a tale. How far it is due to purely Egyptian ideas,
indicated by the Apis bull and the analogies in present African beliefs,
and how far it is Asiatic and belonging to Atys, it would be premature
to decide. But from the weird confusion and mystery of these
transformations, we turn back with renewed pleasure to the simple and
sweet picture of peasant life, and the beauty of Bata, and we see how
true a poet the Egyptian was in feeling and in expression.
XIXth DYNASTY, PTOLEMAIC WRITING
SETNA AND THE MAGIC BOOK
The mighty King User.maat.ra (Ra-meses the Great) had a son named Setna
Kha.em.uast who was a great scribe, and very learned in all the ancient
writings. And he heard that the magic book of Thoth, by which a man may
enchant heaven and earth, and know the language of all birds and beasts,
was buried in the cemetery of Memphis. And he went to search for it with
his brother An.he.hor.eru; and when they found the tomb of the king's
son, Na.nefer.ka.ptah, son of the king of Upper and Lower Egypt,
Mer.neb.ptah, Setna opened it and went in.
Now in the tomb was Na.nefer.ka.ptah, and with him was the _ka_ of his
wife Ahura; for though she was buried at Koptos, her _ka_ dwelt at
Memphis with her husband, whom she loved. And Setna saw them seated
before their offerings, and the book lay between them. And
Na.nefer.ka.ptah said to Setna, "Who are you that break into my tomb in
this way?" He said, "I am Setna, son of the great King User.maat.ra,
living for ever, and I come for that book which I see between you." And
Na.nefer.ka.ptah said, "It cannot be given to you." Then said Setna,
"But I will carry it away by force."
Then Ahura said to Setna, "Do not take this book; for it will bring
trouble on you, as it has upon us. Listen to what we have suffered for it."
"We were the two children of the King Mer.neb.ptah, and he loved us very
much, for he had no others; and Na.nefer.ka.ptah was in his palace as
heir over all the land. And when we were grown, the king said to the
queen, 'I will marry Na.nefer.ka.ptah to the daughter of a general, and
Ahura to the son of another general.' And the queen said, 'No, he is the
heir, let him marry his sister, like the heir of a king, none other is
fit for him.' And the king said, 'That is not fair; they had better be
married to the children of the general.'
"And the queen said, 'It is you who are not dealing rightly with me.'
And the king answered, 'If I have no more than these two children, is it
right that they should marry one another? I will marry Na.nefer.ka.ptah
to the daughter of an officer, and Ahura to the son of another officer.
It has often been done so in our family.'
"And at a time when there was a great feast before the king, they came
to fetch me to the feast. And I was very troubled, and did not behave as
I used to do. And the king said to me, 'Ahura, have you sent some one to
me about this sorry matter, saying, "Let me be married to my elder
brother"? 'I said to him, 'Well, let me marry the son of an officer, and
he marry the daughter of another officer, as it often happens so in our
family.' I laughed, and the king laughed. And the king told the steward
of the palace, 'Let them take Ahura to the house of Na.nefer.ka.ptah
to-night, and all kinds of good things with her.' So they brought me as
a wife to the house of Na.nefer.ka.ptah; and the king ordered them to
give me presents of silver and gold, and things from the palace.
"And Na.nefer.ka.ptah passed a happy time with me, and received all the
presents from the palace; and we loved one another. And when I expected
a child, they told the king, and he was most heartily glad; and he sent
me many things, and a present of the best silver and gold and linen. And
when the time came, I bore this little child that is before you. And
they gave him the name of Mer-ab, and registered him in the book of the
'House of life.'
"And when my brother Na.nefer.ka.ptah went to the cemetery of Memphis,
he did nothing on earth but read the writings that are in the catacombs
of the kings, and the tablets of the 'House of life,' and the
inscriptions that are seen on the monuments, and he worked hard on the
writings. And there was a priest there called Nesi-ptah; and as
Na.nefer.ka.ptah went into a temple to pray, it happened that he went
behind this priest, and was reading the inscriptions that were on the
chapels of the gods. And the priest mocked him and laughed. So
Na.nefer.ka.ptah said to him, 'Why are you laughing at me?' And he
replied, 'I was not laughing at you, or if I happened to do so, it was
at your reading writings that are worthless. If you wish so much to
read writings, come to me, and I will bring you to the place where the
book is which Thoth himself wrote with his own hand, and which will
bring you to the gods. When you read but two pages in this you will
enchant the heaven, the earth, the abyss, the mountains, and the sea;
you shall know what the birds of the sky and the crawling things are
saying; you shall see the fishes of the deep, for a divine power is
there to bring them up out of the depth. And when you read the second
page, if you are in the world of ghosts, you will become again in the
shape you were in on earth. You will see the sun shining in the sky,
with all the gods, and the full moon.'
"And Na.nefer.ka.ptah said, 'By the life of the king! Tell me of
anything you want done and I'll do it for you, if you will only send me
where this book is.' And the priest answered Na.nefer.ka.ptah, 'If you
want to go to the place where the book is, you must give me a hundred
pieces of silver for my funeral, and provide that they shall bury me as
a rich priest.' So Na.nefer.ka.ptah called his lad and told him to give
the priest a hundred pieces of silver; and he made them do as he wished,
even everything that he asked for. Then the priest said to
Na.nefer.ka.ptah, 'This book is in the middle of the river at Koptos, in
an iron box; in the iron box is a bronze box; in the bronze box is a
sycamore box; in the sycamore box is an ivory and ebony box; in the
ivory and ebony box is a silver box; in the silver box is a golden box,
and in that is the book. It is twisted all round with snakes and
scorpions and all the other crawling things around the box in which the
book is; and there is a deathless snake by the box.' And when the priest
told Na.nefer.ka.ptah, he did not know where on earth he was, he was so
much delighted.
"And when he came from the temple he told me all that had happened to
him. And he said, 'I shall go to Koptos, for I must fetch this book; I
will not stay any longer in the north.' And I said, 'Let me dissuade
you, for you prepare sorrow and you will bring me into trouble in the
Thebaid.' And I laid my hand on Na.nefer.ka.ptah, to keep him from going
to Koptos, but he would not listen to me; and he went to the king, and
told the king all that the priest had said. The king asked him, 'What is
it that you want?' and he replied, 'Let them give me the royal boat with
its belongings, for I will go to the south with Ahura and her little boy
Mer-ab, and fetch this book without delay.' So they gave him the royal
boat with its belongings, and we went with him to the haven, and sailed
from there up to Koptos.
"Then the priests of Isis of Koptos, and the high priest of Isis, came
down to us without waiting, to meet Na.nefer.ka.ptah, and their wives
also came to me. We went into the temple of Isis and Harpokrates; and
Na.nefer.ka.ptah brought an ox, a goose, and some wine, and made a
burnt-offering and a drink-offering before Isis of Koptos and
Harpokrates. They brought us to a very fine house, with all good things;
and Na.nefer.ka.ptah spent four days there and feasted with the priests
of Isis of Koptos, and the wives of the priests of Isis also made
holiday with me.