The Tale of Sinuhe
The Middle Kingdom of ancient Egypt (2000 BCE – 1700 BCE) saw the start of more formal writing which included religious scripts, administrative notes, and more in-depth fictional writing. One of the most iconic pieces of writing to come out of the Middle Kingdom was The Tale of Sinuhe. Sinuhe was a courier and assistant to the King of Egypt, Amenhotep I. He fled Egypt and joined a Bedouin tribe to the east and started a new life near Syria. Once he reached old age he returned and finished out his life in Egypt. The importance of this story goes beyond the structure and writing techniques of the text as it provides insight into the cultural differences between Egypt and the Near East. Philologists are still analysing the text and acquiring new insight into the text today. This 4,000-year-old tale provides insight into the world and mind of an Egyptian and is just another example of Egyptian brilliance.
Berlin 3022 & 10499 Papyri
The best-known copies of Sinuhe were from the 12th and 13th dynasties (1900-1700 BCE), and these manuscripts are labelled Berlin 3022 and 10499. The Berlin 10499 (Also known as Ramesseum papyrus 10499) has The Tale of Sinuhe and another story called The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant on the reverse side of the papyrus. Berlin 3022 is the most well-preserved and the best account for translation. The Berlin 3022 is missing the beginning of the tale with 311 total lines, and Berlin 10499 has the beginning, but only has 203 lines. Egyptologists today discuss the strategy of the scribe who created these papyri. They have created a modern replica of the papyrus roll which is five meters long and cut into fourteen sections. When we closely analyse the script we can observe the scribes attempt to clean off the papyri from previous writing and debris. The total word count in most English translations is 4,500 words.
The text on the papyrus is known as Hieratic. This form of writing is like cursive for Middle Egyptian hieroglyphs. This is not to say that Middle Egyptian Hieroglyph versions do not exist. Hieratic was a simpler and faster method for writing larger works of literature, administrative, and religious texts. Schools for scribes used this story as a model for practice, which created many incomplete copies of the story. The Berlin examples are of papyri, but the copies created by students who were training to be scribes used ostraca or limestone flakes. The story is one of the first forms of autobiographical storytelling and, although the author of the story is unknown, he is considered to be the Shakespeare of Middle Egypt. Egyptologists find this tale to be one of the finest pieces of literature to survive from Ancient Egypt. We see many examples in museums like the Berlin Museum, British Museum, and the Ashmolean Museum.
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