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Sinuhe, R.B. Parkinson (Translator)The Tale of Sinuhe: and Other Ancient Egyptian Poems 1940-1640 B.C.
Fiction | Novel/Book in Verse | Adult | BCEA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The King as Representation of Natural and Divine Order
The king’s place in the Egyptian political and social hierarchy reflects the belief that order is best maintained by a centralized authority, imbuing the king with the will of divine beings. Parkinson notes, “The king was regarded as a god and his power united individual bodies into a single prosperous society” (235). It is the responsibility of rulers “to impose order on a complex and chaos-ridden world” (215). As the king was the apex of the social order, granted his position by the gods, rebellion against the king, as Khety says in his teaching, is a revolt against heaven itself (225).
The king’s divine birthright was communicated through associating him with the creator god, the sun god, and thus the sun is often used as imagery to represent the king. “The ‘Loyalist’ Teaching” refers to the king as a sun god “by whose rays one sees” (238). In “The Tale of Neferti,” the sun god and the person of the king are conflated. Neferti prophecies that the sun god will return and Ameny will come and unite the kingdoms, slaughtering enemies, building a fortress; thus “Truth will return to its proper place / with Chaos driven outside” (139). This association rests on the prominence the sun would have in Egyptian daily life through the fact of climate, weather, and its central role in agriculture.
The poems express a common warning that the king must use his power for good. The beginning of “The Teaching of King Amenemhat” describes the king not only as a god but also a just ruler, increasing the good of all (206). The king’s position in control of all of society and its working made his beneficence key to ensuring prosperity for all his subjects. This is represented by his influence on the broader natural order: If the king is just and chaos kept in line, then the Nile will flood in its annual cycle (the season of “Inundation” referred to in “The Tale of Sinuhe”). In a more practical respect, the king would give his followers wealth and status. Loyalty to the king returned material as well as moral reward. The king’s ability to provide charity established the model that his subjects were expected to demonstrate toward the less fortunate, thus eliminating true poverty or want. (Robbery violates this idea of deserving, which is why it is punished so severely.)
The “perfect office” of kingship, and the accompanying semi-divine power, laid on the shoulders of a human subject present occasion for some anxiety in the literature. In “The Teaching of King Amenemhat,” the king laments his own assassination and uses his mortality to warn his son to be on his guard. “The Teaching for King Merikare” explores what happens when the king is fallible, or when injustice is committed in his name. In “The Tale of Sinuhe” the king shows a personal side when he welcomes Sinuhe home to Egypt and teases him about running away. Still, his playfulness does not detract from his dignity and the awe owed to his station.
Of all the ethical and moral concerns reflected in the three genres of literature collected here, the greatest volume by far concerns the duties and nature of the king, reflecting the importance this central figure held in ensuring stability.
Truth, Wisdom, and Justice
The Egyptian concept of maat (also spelled ma’at) had several facets, combining truth, justice, and right. Maat was the shared principle underlying both the divine and natural order, personified in Egyptian religious writings as a goddess who was the daughter of the sun god, Re, and sister to the god of wisdom, Thoth. In a ceremony that decided one’s passage to the afterlife, Maat weighed the heart of the deceased on her divine scale. If the heart balanced with her symbol, the ostrich feather, then the departed had led a worthy life and could be admitted to the next world. Thus, the concern with truth (capitalized in Parkinson’s translation to identify its status as an objective, immutable principle) runs throughout the Middle Kingdom literature, reflecting the belief that “doing Truth” is not only the model of ethical behavior that the gods require, but also the prerequisite for continued existence beyond death.
The primary status of truth is never disputed in the poems, even in those tales that introduce more magical elements with less objective reality. Adhering to and upholding truth is a central concern of the wisdom literature, but the principle underlies the tales as well. Human ability to uphold truth is one of the chief concerns in “The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant,” when the peasant reminds the High Steward Rensi that “Doing Truth is the breath of life” (65). The peasant states that “Truth itself is for eternity” (73) and references the personified goddess when he speaks of truth fleeing from Rensi over his inaction on the peasant’s petitions. Truth is expressed not just as an abstract ideal but as an active principle, sustained by a set of actions that can and should be performed.
Moreover, upholding Truth exerts power not only in the living world but also in the next. Their lingering reputation among the living proves a matter of much concern for the kings and officials speaking in the wisdom literature, and a central preoccupation is the subject’s relationship to truth. King Khety implores his son Merikare, “Do Truth so that you may endure upon earth!” (219). The righteous man could continue to attract fame and reverence with his name if he left behind a worthy reputation.
Truth is presented in the wisdom literature as a stabilizing, even protective influence. If truth is adhered to, social order ensues, and chaos is put out of doors. This is true at the individual level, where calmness prevails if a man upholds truth in his personal life, as well as at the national level. Truth within the council, administered by king and officials, will keep chaos at bay as effectively as the king’s army will repel foreign invaders. Truth is the performance that the gods and king will reward with prosperity, safety, and, as the Vizier Ptahhotep suggests, even a healthy and dignified old age. Of all the values crucial to the Egyptian worldview, truth, with its attendant features of wisdom and justice, is the most important.
The Power of Words and Storytelling
A prevailing theme through the poems is the effect that words and the act of storytelling can have on a listening audience or on the speaker himself. The ability of these pieces to survive for nearly 4,000 years attests to the power that words, if preserved, can hold throughout the ages. More immediately to the ancient Egyptians, the evidence of the enduring power of words was carved into their funeral monuments in the form of inscriptions. These elegies, most often an autobiography of the important person deposited within the tomb, demonstrated the ability of words to frame a person’s reputation, shape perceptions about him that lingered for posterity, and instruct passersby.
The power of words is implicit in wisdom literature, as the speaker expects the advice he communicates will be heeded. Sometimes, of course, the speaker expresses the fear that he will be ignored, and scolds or exhorts his listener by turns. The didactic nature of these pieces speaks to the importance of communicating values, ethics, and standards of behavior to the next generation, sprinkled as they are with maxims and proverbs. The frequent imperatives further suggest a performative aspect to these written speeches, substantiating Parkinson’s claim in the Introduction that these literary poems were designed to be read aloud to a listening audience. This replicates the performance of oral literature, a tradition attested to by the tales and discourses that feature a king demanding stories as entertainment. King Cheops requires stories as a salve for boredom; Sneferu and the king in “The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant” both desire to hear perfect speech as a kind of artistic performance.
“The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant” performs the power of speech in the peasant’s petitions, which ultimately win him justice. His performance also illustrates the appeal of “perfect speech,” that which not only reflects truth but also demonstrates an artistic style pleasing to the listener. “The Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor” suggests a consolatory aspect to storytelling: The sailor hopes his story will hearten the count, while the tale of woe conveyed by the talking serpent suggests he also eases a painful memory by communicating it to the stranded sailor. When Khakheperreseneb addresses his heart, he does so in the hopes that framing his suffering in words will provide relief. The man and his soul in their dialogue sparring over the correct way to regard death reach a reconciliation that ascribes a power to the dialogue as a consolatory and philosophical exercise.
Finally, the scribe Khety provides a more playful outlook on the power of words when he praises the profession of the scribe so his son will embrace his apprenticeship. Overall, the power of words is linked to the purposes of advising and remembering, speaking to a profound educational value to the literature as well as its rewards as an art.
