Chapter VI - Fables

The dialogue is long and varied. Fables are introduced in support of one point or another, and sometimes direct complaints are made against the gods. The bias of the author is in favour of the sceptical jackal, and all his logical acuteness is enlisted on that side. Occasionally the only resource of the cat is to fall into a passion, and the jackal feels a wholesome respect for the very tangible arguments of her claws. The text is, unfortunately, in a bad state of preservation, and the contents, to which Revillout has given special attention, are difficult of interpretation. The little that is intelligible, however, suffices to show that we have here in demotic form one more example of the perpetual antagonism that may be observed in the thought of the most diverse peoples between two views of life—a pessimistic fatalism and an optimism that trusts in the higher powers.

The fable, now as in ancient times a favourite form of literature in the East, flourished, as we have seen, in Egyptian soil. Two small boards in the Turin Museum contain a fable of about iooo B.C., entitled “The Dispute between the Stomach and the Head.” This trial is represented as taking place before the supreme tribunal of Egypt, the Court of the Thirty, and during the proceedings its president weeps incessantly—a truly Oriental touch. Evidently the stomach first brought forward his plea, but here the text is defective. It gives, however, the answer of the head, who speaks of himself with much detail as the principal beam from which radiate all the other beams that support the house. His is the eye that sees into the far distance, the nose that breathe-!, the mouth that speaks ; he it is that animates all.

We have unfortunately only eight lines of the speech; the rest of the proceedings and the verdict are wanting. The parts preserved, however, enable us to recognise the earliest version so far discovered of the widespread fable of the Strife between the Stomach and the Members. It is well known to most of us as the “Fable of Menenius Agrippa,” from the tradition that it was spoken by him to the plebeians on Mons Sacer when, in 492 B.C., they threatened to forsake Rome.

It is so far impossible to say to what extent the animal fable was popular in Egypt. Certainly the statement is often made that the so-called Fables of ;Esop must have originated in that land of the cult of animals, and in the Leyden demotic papyrus lately mentioned we find the fable of the grateful mouse who freed the lion from the meshes of the snare in which he had become entangled. But no conclusive authority in the domain of literary history can be claimed by any a priori “must,” and the demotic text, as we have already seen, dates within the Christian era. The fable is in all essentials Greek in conception, and Greek ideas are merely worked out in further detail on their own lines. It is, therefore, more probable that we have in the demotic an adaptation of a Greek text than that the relation is reversed.

Representations of animals engaged in various human employments, such as waging war, playing draughts, performing on musical instruments, are often adduced as evidence of the existence of the animal fable in Egypt. The best known examples of these are found in papyri in London and Turin ; of less importance are a papyrus at Gizeh and several ostraca, all the material alike dating about iooo B.C. In these pictures, however, there is not a single trait that would compel us to regard them as illustrations of one or more narratives. Lepsius is no doubt correct in his conclusion that their purport is satirical, and that they are intended to caricature the stereotyped monotony of some of the reliefs adorning the walls of tombs and temples.

He has succeeded also in placing side by side with the papyrus pictures striking examples of the kind of production of which these are parodies. That the pictures were actually intended as parodies is evident from the contents of the section which follows on the animal pictures in the Turin papyrus. The space is filled by erotic caricatures which, as a matter of course, cannot possibly have had any connection with fables. This part of the papyrus is important as being the only example as yet revealed of a specifically erotic literature in the Nile Valley. Such writing was so widespread in the East that its existence in ancient Egypt can hardly be questioned, but no texts devoted to it have so far been discovered.

The only trace of an ethical fable is a fragmentary beginning found in a papyrus of the Ptolemaic period. Its form is worthy of note. The Arabian Nights have familiarised us with the Oriental method of administering indirect reproof to any sultan whose character and deeds appear shocking to those around him. Dread of the royal anger prevents any attempt at direct admonition, so a vizier or other ofiīcial undertakes to tell a story to the offending monarch, in the hope that he may draw the moral for himself. The Pharaoh who figures in this text is Amasis (died 526 B.C.), the last important ruler of an independent Egypt, and figuring in Herodotus as a roi canaille of popular Greek tradition. He is censured especially for his pleasure-seeking and Bacchanalian habits, and we are told how he sought to excuse his occasional excesses by the analogy of the bow which could not always remain tightly strung.

The character ascribed to this king in the demotic text is quite in accordance with the Greek tradition :

“It happened one day in the time of King Amasis that the king spake to his nobles :

“‘It is my good pleasure to drink Egyptian kelebi’ (an extremely intoxicating beverage).

They spake

‘Oh, our mighty Lord! it is hard to drink Egyptian kelebi.’

He said unto them:

‘Hath that which I say unto you an evil savour ?’

They said,

‘Oh, our mighty Lord ! that which pleaseth the king, that let him do.’

The king commanded

‘Let Egyptian kelebi be brought to the lake,’

and they did according to the word of the king. The king washed himself with his children, and there was no other wine set before them but Egyptian kelebi. The king feasted with his children, he drank much wine for the love which he bore to Egyptian kelebi; then, on the evening of that day, the king fell asleep by the lake, for he had commanded a couch to be placed in an arbour on the shore of the lake.—When the morning dawned the king could not arise because of the heaviness of his carouse.

When an hour had passed, and he still could not arise, then the courtiers lamented, saying,

‘Can such things be ? Behold, the king drinketh himself drunken like a man of the people. A man of the people cannot come into the presence of the king on matters of business.’

Therefore the courtiers went to the place where the king was lying, and spake:

‘Oh! our mighty Lord, what wish doth the king cherish?’

The king said:

‘It is my will and pleasure to make myself drunken. Is there none among you can tell me a story that I may keep myself from sleep ?’

“Now, among the courtiers, there was a high official named Peun, who knew many tales. He stood before the king, and began :

‘Oh, our mighty Lord ! Knoweth the king not the story of the young sailor? In the days of King Psammetichus there was a young sailor and he was wedded. Another sailor fell in love with the wife of the first, and she loved him and he loved her. Then it happened one day that the king summoned him to his presence.

When the feast was over great desire took hold upon him—here a hiatus occurs in the text—and he wished once more to come into the presence of the king (?). He returned to his home and washed himself with his wife, but he could not drink as aforetime. When the hour came for bed he could not bring himself to sleep because of the great grief that oppressed him. Then said his wife unto him:

‘What hath befallen thee on the river ? ’”

The rest is wanting, and we shall unfortunately most probably never know in what particular way the relation of an incident of the reign of King Psammetichus, also represented by Greek authors as given up to drunkenness, was intended to serve for the edification of King Amasis.

In Egyptian literature, however, texts aiming simply at entertainment are much more numerous than those like the above, having a more or less edifying purport. Most of them share with the Arabian Nights the peculiarity that the heroes of the various stories are not fictitious but historical personages. The most illustrious of the Pharaohs and the most distinguished of their generals appear on the scene, and until lately this fact often led investigators into mistaken attempts to find in such papyri trustworthy historical information. That is not possible. The cycle of legends that sprang up in the West round the name of Charles the Great, and the Eastern traditions of Harun al Raschid are not records of actual facts, and this is just as little the case when the stories in Egyptian papyri deal with Kheops, Usertesen, Ramses II., and other kings famed in their day in the Nile Valley.

The subordinate characters are sometimes also historical figures, but as a rule they and the more minute details of the stories are alike inventions. The central point of the whole is often an actual incident or an existing fact, such as the taking of a particular town, the existence of a mysterious door, or the remarkable appearance of a statue. The author’s part is to elaborate a story accounting for these facts or giving the issue of events connected with them, and here we have no longer history but fiction, invented to give pleasure and to wile away a tedious hour for readers and hearers.