The Shipwrecked Sailor: A Tale of Ancient Egypt by John L. Foster

The Shipwrecked Sailor: A Tale of Ancient Egypt Reviews

• 
  Enola Stevenson

  Considered to be one of the oldest poems in the world, and it's about an Egyptian sailor and a speaking serpent...
• 
  Basilius

  If you are brave, master your heart,
  and you will fill your embrace with your children,
  kiss your wife, and see your house!
  This is better than anything.
  You will reach home, and remain there,
  amongst your kinsmen.
  
  I think I may have lucked out on my quest to find decent Ancient Egyptian prose: here we have a short fable called Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor that dates to around 1900 BCE. There is a framing device where two Egyptian officials, just returning from an expedition, wait in the royal lobby to speak with the Pharaoh. One official, a Count of some import, is nervous and fears reprisal. The other, a minor lord, tries to reassure the Count by recounting a story where he almost lost his life at sea. He was with a large crew on a large boat but a storm killed everyone but the narrator. He became shipwrecked on an enchanted island with bountiful food, and ran into a god of creation—in fact a giant serpent. The serpent promised protection and safe return home for the sailor, and even let him stay on the island for a few months of vacation. Before the sailor was rescued the serpent offered this advice: cherish your homeland and family; it’s all we really have. The sailor internalized this time-worn lesson, returned to Egypt safety, and was promoted from mere sailor to lord after giving Pharaoh all the treasure from the island he brought with him.
  
  If this seems too simple, there are two ‘spins’ in the story that complicate things. First, the Count, after hearing the lord’s tale, replies like this:
  
  ‘Don’t act clever, my friend!
  Who pours water [for] a goose,
  when the day dawns for its slaughter on the morrow?’
  
  What do you make of the response? Either a.) The Count does not appreciate the story, likely because he heard it second hand or finds it implausible (this showing the limitations of story-telling and its inferiority to lived experience), or b.) The story itself is undermining its own cliché moral. If the former, the tale is genuine advice that only common-sense can appreciate, but if the latter, the work becomes a comedic satire on all proverbial ‘wisdom.’ The proverb the Count gives in reply, about the absurdity of nurturing something you’re about to kill, argues that the entire story the sailor just gave is irrelevant or impotent to the issue at hand: the Pharaoh may soon execute the Count. Unless of course the Count is exaggerating, in which the sailor’s advice is about logical vs illogical stress. The story works both ways.
  
  The second spin is that the serpent god, when offered praise and burnt offerings by the sailor, laughs in his face. In other words the gift was so insignificant or irrelevant the god didn’t even bother feigning appreciation. We could take this as a comment on what’s really important in life, consistent with the genuine theme, but it also could symbolize the equally useless advice the sailor gave the Count. Perhaps he already knows the moral, or finds it quaint. The success of the work is that it works on both levels—a simple fable, or ironic commentary on simple fables. I suspect the latter is predominant or intentional, as the scribe (Ameny son of Amenyaa) ends the the work by adding a blessing after his name. It’s akin to ending this review with
  
  --Vasilis, the AWESOME.