Westcar Papyrus
Encyclopedia
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh...
ian text containing five stories about miracles performed by priest
Priest
A priest is a person authorized to perform the sacred rites of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particular, rites of sacrifice to, and propitiation of, a deity or deities...
s and magicians. Each of these tales are being told at the royal court
Court
A court is a form of tribunal, often a governmental institution, with the authority to adjudicate legal disputes between parties and carry out the administration of justice in civil, criminal, and administrative matters in accordance with the rule of law...
of the King (Pharaoh
Pharaoh
Pharaoh is a title used in many modern discussions of the ancient Egyptian rulers of all periods. The title originates in the term "pr-aa" which means "great house" and describes the royal palace...
) Cheops
Khufu
Khufu , also known as Cheops or, in Manetho, Suphis , was a Pharaoh of Ancient Egypt's Old Kingdom. He reigned from around 2589 to 2566 BC. Khufu was the second pharaoh of the Fourth Dynasty. He is generally accepted as being the builder of the Great Pyramid of Giza, one of the Seven Wonders of...
(4th dynasty
Fourth dynasty of Egypt
The fourth dynasty of ancient Egypt is characterized as a "golden age" of the Old Kingdom. Dynasty IV lasted from ca. 2613 to 2494 BC...
) by his sons. The story in the papyrus is usually rendered in English as "King Cheops and the Magicians" and "The Tale of King Cheops' Court". In German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
language, in which the text of the Westcar Papyrus was first translated, it is rendered as “Die Märchen des Papyrus Westcar” (the fairy tales of Papyrus Westcar).
The surviving material of the Westcar Papyrus
Papyrus
Papyrus is a thick paper-like material produced from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus, a wetland sedge that was once abundant in the Nile Delta of Egypt....
consists of twelve rolls. Miriam Lichtheim
Miriam Lichtheim
Miriam Lichtheim was a translator of ancient Egyptian texts whose translations are still widely used.-Biography:In the 1930s she studied under Hans Jakob Polotsky at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem...
dates the document to the Hyksos period (18th to 16th century BC), but the tales appear to have originated some time in the 12th dynasty of the Middle Kingdom
Middle Kingdom of Egypt
The Middle Kingdom of Egypt is the period in the history of ancient Egypt stretching from the establishment of the Eleventh Dynasty to the end of the Fourteenth Dynasty, between 2055 BC and 1650 BC, although some writers include the Thirteenth and Fourteenth dynasties in the Second Intermediate...
(ca. 20th century BC). Linguist and Egyptologist Verena Lepper thinks it may be possible that the Westcar Papyrus was already written during the 13th dynasty
Middle Kingdom of Egypt
The Middle Kingdom of Egypt is the period in the history of ancient Egypt stretching from the establishment of the Eleventh Dynasty to the end of the Fourteenth Dynasty, between 2055 BC and 1650 BC, although some writers include the Thirteenth and Fourteenth dynasties in the Second Intermediate...
. The papyrus has been used by historians as a literary resource for reconstituting the history of the 4th dynasty
Fourth dynasty of Egypt
The fourth dynasty of ancient Egypt is characterized as a "golden age" of the Old Kingdom. Dynasty IV lasted from ca. 2613 to 2494 BC...
.
The papyrus is now on display under low-light conditions in the Egyptian Museum of Berlin
Egyptian Museum of Berlin
The Egyptian Museum of Berlin is home to one of the world's most important collections of Ancient Egyptian artifacts.The collection is part of the Neues Museum.-History:...
.
Discovery story
In 1823 or 1824 a British adventurer, Henry Westcar apparently discovered the papyrus during travels in Egypt. For unknown reasons he didn't note the exact circumstances under which he obtained received the artifactArtifact (archaeology)
An artifact or artefact is "something made or given shape by man, such as a tool or a work of art, esp an object of archaeological interest"...
.
In 1838 or 1839 German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius
Karl Richard Lepsius
Karl Richard Lepsius was a pioneering Prussian Egyptologist and linguist and pioneer of modern archaeology.-Background:...
claimed to have received the papyrus from Westcar's niece. As Lepsius was able to read some signs of Hieratic
Hieratic
Hieratic refers to a cursive writing system that was used in the provenance of the pharaohs in Egypt and Nubia that developed alongside the hieroglyphic system, to which it is intimately related...
, he recognized some of the royal cartouche
Cartouche
In Egyptian hieroglyphs, a cartouche is an ellipse with a horizontal line at one end, indicating that the text enclosed is a royal name, coming into use during the beginning of the Fourth Dynasty under Pharaoh Sneferu, replacing the earlier serekh...
names of the kings and so he dated the text to the old kingdom. There are however inconsistencies about the true nature of the acquisition and the subsequent whereabouts of the Westcar Papyrus. Lepsius writes that the document was on display in the Oxford Bodleian Library, but public exhibition
Exhibition
An exhibition, in the most general sense, is an organized presentation and display of a selection of items. In practice, exhibitions usually occur within museums, galleries and exhibition halls, and World's Fairs...
s are documented there since the early 1860s and Lepsius' name doesn't appear in any lists or documents. Furthermore Lepsius never made the text of the Westcar Papyrus public; he stored the papyrus at home in the attic
Attic
An attic is a space found directly below the pitched roof of a house or other building . Attic is generally the American/Canadian reference to it...
, where it was found a little later after Lepsius' death. The inconsistencies led to numerous speculation and it was even thought by British historians that Lepsius may have stolen the papyrus.
In 1886 German Egyptologist Adolf Erman
Adolf Erman
Johann Peter Adolf Erman was a renowned Egyptologist and lexicographer.-Life:Born in Berlin, he was the son of Georg Adolf Erman and grandson of Paul Erman....
bought the papyrus from Lepsius' son and left it to the Museum of Berlin. As the hiratic signs were still insufficiently investigated and translated, the Westcar Papyrus was displayed as some kind of curiosity
Curiosity
Curiosity is an emotion related to natural inquisitive behavior such as exploration, investigation, and learning, evident by observation in human and many animal species. The term can also be used to denote the behavior itself being caused by the emotion of curiosity...
. Since Erman's first attempt at a complete translation in 1890, the Westcar Papyrus has been translated numerous times, resulting in different outcomes. The dating of the text also varies.
Material description
Papyrus Westcar is a re-used papyrus made of the plant Cyperus papyrusCyperus papyrus
Cyperus papyrus is a monocot belonging to the sedge family Cyperaceae. It is a herbaceous perennial native to Africa, and forms tall stands of reed-like swamp vegetation in shallow water....
. The scroll of pWestcar has been separated into three parts. During the lifetime of Lepsius and Erman it was in two parts; it's not known when and why the scroll was severed into three fragments. The text written on the papyrus includes twelve column
Column
A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a vertical structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. For the purpose of wind or earthquake engineering, columns may be designed to resist lateral forces...
s in all. The first part contains on the recto
Recto
The recto and verso are respectively the "front" and "back" sides of a leaf of paper in a bound item such as a codex, book, broadsheet, or pamphlet. In languages written from left to right the recto is the right-hand page and the verso the left-hand page...
(the front) columns one to three, the second part contains on its recto columns four and five and the third part contains on the verso (the back) columns six to nine. On the recto the third part contains the final columns, ten to twelve. The papyrus textile
Textile
A textile or cloth is a flexible woven material consisting of a network of natural or artificial fibres often referred to as thread or yarn. Yarn is produced by spinning raw fibres of wool, flax, cotton, or other material to produce long strands...
is grainy, of greyish-yellowish colour and very fragile. Part one was fixed onto linen
Linen
Linen is a textile made from the fibers of the flax plant, Linum usitatissimum. Linen is labor-intensive to manufacture, but when it is made into garments, it is valued for its exceptional coolness and freshness in hot weather....
and placed between two glass panes. At five spots the papyrus was fixed to the glass with methyl cellulose. Part two was fixed to a cardboard
Cardboard (paper product)
Cardboard is a generic term for a heavy-duty paper of various strengths, ranging from a simple arrangement of a single thick sheet of paper to complex configurations featuring multiple corrugated and uncorrugated layers....
and wood
Wood
Wood is a hard, fibrous tissue found in many trees. It has been used for hundreds of thousands of years for both fuel and as a construction material. It is an organic material, a natural composite of cellulose fibers embedded in a matrix of lignin which resists compression...
en plate and is covered by a glass pane. Part three was simply placed between two glass panes and was completely glued to them. The adhesive
Adhesive
An adhesive, or glue, is a mixture in a liquid or semi-liquid state that adheres or bonds items together. Adhesives may come from either natural or synthetic sources. The types of materials that can be bonded are vast but they are especially useful for bonding thin materials...
used for this has partially lost its transparency
Transparency and translucency
In the field of optics, transparency is the physical property of allowing light to pass through a material; translucency only allows light to pass through diffusely. The opposite property is opacity...
and a whitish haze has appeared. The edges of all three parts were left free for air circulation. Because of the paper lamination during the 18h century all the papyrus fragments are partially damaged; at several spots the material is torn, distorted and squashed. Some of the fibres are now lying over the inscription. All of the artifact shows large gaps and the rim of the scrolls is badly frayed. Because of the gaps many parts of the text are now missing.
The text itself is completely written in black iron gall ink and carbon black ink and divided by rubra
Rubra
Rubra, red in Latin, may refer to :* Rubra, an Edenist serpent, a character of the Night's Dawn trilogyand also :* Folliculitis rubra, a genodermatose* Granulosis rubra nasi, a rare familial disease of children occurring on the nose, cheeks, and chin...
into ten paragraphs. Between the neatly written sentences red traces of an older text are visible. It looks like Papyrus Westcar is a Palimpsest
Palimpsest
A palimpsest is a manuscript page from a scroll or book from which the text has been scraped off and which can be used again. The word "palimpsest" comes through Latin palimpsēstus from Ancient Greek παλίμψηστος originally compounded from πάλιν and ψάω literally meaning “scraped...
; the unknown ancient Egyptian author obviously tried but partially failed to wipe the older text off. The clean and calligraphical handwriting shows that the author was a highly educated professional.
The tales of Papyrus Westcar
The first story, told by an unknown son of Khufu (possibly DjedefraDjedefra
Djedefre was an Egyptian pharaoh, the son and immediate successor of Khufu. The mother of Djedefre is unknown. His name means "Enduring like Re." Djedefre was the first king to use the title Son of Ra as part of his royal titulary, which is seen as an indication of the growing popularity of the...
), is missing everything but the conclusion, in which Khufu orders blessed offerings to king Djoser
Djoser
Netjerikhet or Djoser is the best-known pharaoh of the Third dynasty of Egypt. He commissioned his official, Imhotep, to build the first of the pyramids, a step pyramid for him at Saqqara...
. It seems to have been a text detailing a miracle performed by a lector priest in the reign of king Djoser, possibly the famous Imhotep
Imhotep
Imhotep , fl. 27th century BC was an Egyptian polymath, who served under the Third Dynasty king Djoser as chancellor to the pharaoh and high priest of the sun god Ra at Heliopolis...
himself.
The second story, told by Khafra
Khafra
Khafra — also Khafre — was an Egyptian pharaoh of the Fourth dynasty, who had his capital at Memphis. According to some authors he was the son and successor of Khufu, but it is more commonly accepted that Djedefre was Khufu's successor and Khafra was Djedefre's...
, is set during the reign of one of Khufu's predecessors. King Nebka's chief lector Ubaoner
Ubaoner
Ubaoner is the name of a fictitious ancient Egyptian magician appearing in the second chapter of a story told in the legendary Westcar Papyrus. He is said to have worked wonders during the reign of king Nebka .-The literary person:...
finds that his wife is having a love affair with a townsman of Memphis
Memphis, Egypt
Memphis was the ancient capital of Aneb-Hetch, the first nome of Lower Egypt. Its ruins are located near the town of Helwan, south of Cairo.According to legend related by Manetho, the city was founded by the pharaoh Menes around 3000 BC. Capital of Egypt during the Old Kingdom, it remained an...
, and he fashions a crocodile
Nile crocodile
The Nile crocodile or Common crocodile is an African crocodile which is common in Somalia, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Egypt, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Gabon, South Africa, Malawi, Sudan, Botswana, and Cameroon...
in wax
Wax
thumb|right|[[Cetyl palmitate]], a typical wax ester.Wax refers to a class of chemical compounds that are plastic near ambient temperatures. Characteristically, they melt above 45 °C to give a low viscosity liquid. Waxes are insoluble in water but soluble in organic, nonpolar solvents...
. Upon learning that his unfaithful wife is meeting her lover, he spells the figurine to come to life at the contact with water, and sets his caretaker
Property caretaker
A Property caretaker is a person, group or organization that cares for real estate for trade or financial compensation, and sometimes as a barter for rent-free living accommodations...
to throw it in the stream by which the townsman enters and leaves the lector's estate undiscovered. Upon catching the townsman, the crocodile takes him to the bottom of the lake, where they remain for seven days as the lector entertains the visiting pharaoh. When he tells Nebka the story, and calls the crocodile up again, the king orders the crocodile to devour the townsman once and for all. Then he has the adulterous wife brought forth, set on fire and thrown in the river.
The third story, told by another son named Baufra
Baufra
Baufra was a son of King Khufu from the 4th dynasty of ancient Egypt. He is known from a story in the Papyrus Westcar and an inscription in Wadi Hammamat. He may have been buried in the double mastaba G 7310 - 7320 in Giza....
, is set during the reign of his grandfather Sneferu
Sneferu
Sneferu, also spelled as Snephru, Snefru or Snofru , was the founder of the Fourth dynasty of Egypt. Estimates of his reign vary, with for instance The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt suggesting a reign from around 2613 BC to 2589 BC, a reign of 24 years, while Rolf Krauss suggests a 30-year reign...
. The king is bored and his chief lector Djadjaemankh
Djadjaemankh
Djadjaemankh is the name of a fictitious ancient Egyptian magician appearing in the third chapter of a story told in the legendary Westcar Papyrus. He is said to have worked wonders during the reign of king Sneferu ....
advises him to gather twenty young women and use them to sail him around the palace lake. Sneferu orders twenty beautiful oars made, and gives the women nets to drape around them as they sail. However, one of the girls loses an amulet - a fish pendant made of malachite
Malachite
Malachite is a copper carbonate mineral, with the formula Cu2CO32. This green-colored mineral crystallizes in the monoclinic crystal system, and most often forms botryoidal, fibrous, or stalagmitic masses. Individual crystals are rare but do occur as slender to acicular prisms...
so dear to her that she will not even accept a substitute from the royal treasury, and until it's returned to her neither she nor any of the other girls will row. The king laments this, and the chief lector folds aside the water to allow the retrieval of the amulet, then folds the water back.
The fourth story, told by Hordjedef, concerns a miracle set within Khufu's own reign. A townsman named Dedi
Dedi
Dedi is the name of a fictitious ancient Egyptian magician appearing in the fourth chapter of a story told in the legendary Westcar Papyrus. He is said to have worked wonders during the reign of king Khufu .-Literary person:Dedi appears only in the fourth story of the Westcar Papyrus - there is no...
apparently has the power to reattach a severed head onto an animal, to tame wild lion
Lion
The lion is one of the four big cats in the genus Panthera, and a member of the family Felidae. With some males exceeding 250 kg in weight, it is the second-largest living cat after the tiger...
s, and knows the number of secret rooms in the shrine of Thoth
Thoth
Thoth was considered one of the more important deities of the Egyptian pantheon. In art, he was often depicted as a man with the head of an ibis or a baboon, animals sacred to him. His feminine counterpart was Seshat...
. Khufu, intrigued, sends his son to invite this wise man, and upon Dedi's arrival at court he orders a goose, a undefined waterbird, and a bull
Bull
Bull usually refers to an uncastrated adult male bovine.Bull may also refer to:-Entertainment:* Bull , an original show on the TNT Network* "Bull" , an episode of television series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation...
beheaded. Dedi reattaches the heads. Khufu then questions him on his knowledge on the shrine of Thoth, and Dedi answers that he does not know the number of rooms, but he knows where they are. When Khufu asks for the wheres and hows, Dedi answers that the one who can give Khufu access is not him, but the first of the three future kings in the womb of the woman Rededjet
Rededjet
Rededjet is the name of a fictitious ancient Egyptian female hero appearing in the fifth chapter of a story told in the legendary Westcar Papyrus. She is said to have fulfilled a prophecy by giving birth to three future kings during the reign of king Khufu , who received the prophecy from a...
. This is a prophecy
Prophecy
Prophecy is a process in which one or more messages that have been communicated to a prophet are then communicated to others. Such messages typically involve divine inspiration, interpretation, or revelation of conditioned events to come as well as testimonies or repeated revelations that the...
detailing the beginnings of the Fifth dynasty
Fifth dynasty of Egypt
The fifth dynasty of ancient Egypt is often combined with Dynasties III, IV and VI under the group title the Old Kingdom. Dynasty V dates approximately from 2494 to 2345 BC.-Rulers:...
, starting with Userkaf
Userkaf
Userkaf was the founder of the Fifth dynasty of Egypt and the first pharaoh to start the tradition of building sun temples at Abusir. His name means "his Ka is powerful". He ruled from 2494-2487 BC and constructed the Pyramid of Userkaf complex at Saqqara.- Family :Userkaf's wife was Queen...
.
The final story, breaks from the format and moves the focus to Rededjet's giving birth to her three sons. Upon the day of her children's birth, Ra
Ra
Ra is the ancient Egyptian sun god. By the Fifth Dynasty he had become a major deity in ancient Egyptian religion, identified primarily with the mid-day sun...
orders Isis
Isis
Isis or in original more likely Aset is a goddess in Ancient Egyptian religious beliefs, whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. She was worshipped as the ideal mother and wife as well as the matron of nature and magic...
, Nephthys
Nephthys
In Egyptian mythology, Nephthys is a member of the Great Ennead of Heliopolis, a daughter of Nut and Geb. Nephthys was typically paired with her sister Isis in funerary rites because of their role as protectors of the mummy and the god Osiris and as the sister-wife of Seth.Nephthys is regarded as...
, Meskhenet, Heket and Khnum to aid her. They disguise themselves as musician
Musician
A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....
s and hurry to Reddedet's house to help her with the difficult birth. The three children are born, each described as strong and healthy, with limbs covered in gold and wearing headdresses of lapis lazuli
Lapis lazuli
Lapis lazuli is a relatively rare semi-precious stone that has been prized since antiquity for its intense blue color....
. The maid servant of Rededjet later has an argument with her mistress, receives a beating and flees, vowing to tell king Khufu what had happened. But on the way, she meets her brother and tells the story to him. Displeased, he beats her, too, and sends her going to the water's edge where a crocodile catches her. The brother then goes to see Rededjet, who is crying over the loss of the girl. The brother starts to confess what has happened and at this point the papyrus ends.
Analysis and interpretations
Papyrus Westcar is of the highest interest to historians and Egyptologists, since it`s one of the oldest Egyptian documents that contains such a complex novel. Unfortunately the name of the author is lost. The most recent translations and linguistic investigations by Miriam Lichtheim and Verena Lepper reveal interesting writing and spelling elements hidden in the text of the Papyrus, which has lead them to a new evaluation of the individual stories.The first story is lost due to the damage to the papyrus. The preserved sentences merely reveal the main protagonist of the story, King Djoser. The name of the hero, who is said to have performed the miracle, is completely lost, but Liechtheim and Lepper think it possible, that the Papyrus was talking about the famous architect and high lector priest Imhotep.
Linguistic stilistics and changing tenses
The second and third story are written in a conspicuous flowery, old-fashioned style, the author has obviously tried to make the novels sound long time handed but fantastic at the same time. He picked up quainted phrases and makes the heroes acting stilted and ceremonious. All three first stories are written in past tensePast tense
The past tense is a grammatical tense that places an action or situation in the past of the current moment , or prior to some specified time that may be in the speaker's past, present, or future...
and all kings are addressed with the salutation “justified” (egypt. maa´-cheru), which was typical in Ancient Egypt when talking about a deceased king. The heroes are addressed in the preserved stories II. and III. alike. Curiously, all kings are addressed with their birth name, notwithstanding that this was actually unusual in author´s lifetime. Deceased kings were normally always called by their personal name
Personal name
A personal name is the proper name identifying an individual person, and today usually comprises a given name bestowed at birth or at a young age plus a surname. It is nearly universal for a human to have a name; except in rare cases, for example feral children growing up in isolation, or infants...
, living kings were called by their horus name. But king Khufu is called by his birth name yet in story IV., where he is threatened as being still alive and being himself the main actor. And even the future kings Userkaf, Sahure and Neferirkare-Kakai are called by their birthname. Verena Lepper thinks, that the reason may be some kind of spelling reform due the lifetime of the author: he tried to fix the spelling rule for naming a deceased king at all costs to show that even the future kings are long since dead during his own lifetime. For this reason Verena Lepper doubts that the novel of pWestcar is based on documents originating from the Old Kingdom itself.
Have story II. and III. been written in past tense, story IV. and V. are written in present tense
Present tense
The present tense is a grammatical tense that locates a situation or event in present time. This linguistic definition refers to a concept that indicates a feature of the meaning of a verb...
now. The unknown author moves the timeline and also changes his mode of expression from “old-fashioned” into a contemporary term. So he clearly divides from “long time passed” to “most recently”, without cutting the timeline too fast. The encountering speech of prince Hordjedef builds the decisive transition: Hordjedef is sick of hearing old, dusty tales that cannot be proven in any way. He explains that a now-happening wonder would be more rich in content and instructive and so he brings up the story of Dedi. The last sequel
Sequel
A sequel is a narrative, documental, or other work of literature, film, theatre, or music that continues the story of or expands upon issues presented in some previous work...
of the forth story, in which the magician Dedi gives a prophecy to king Khufu, moves to the future tense
Future tense
In grammar, a future tense is a verb form that marks the event described by the verb as not having happened yet, but expected to happen in the future , or to happen subsequent to some other event, whether that is past, present, or future .-Expressions of future tense:The concept of the future,...
for a short time, then is moving back to present tense again. The latter tense is retained until the end of the Westcar-story.
Depictions of the kings
Papyrus Westcar contains also hidden allusions and puns to the characters of the kings Nebka, Sneferu and Khufu. An evaluation of the character description of Djoser is impossible due the great loss of his story.In story II. king Nebka plays the key-role. He is depicted there as a strict, but lawful judge
Judge
A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as part of a panel of judges. The powers, functions, method of appointment, discipline, and training of judges vary widely across different jurisdictions. The judge is supposed to conduct the trial impartially and in an open...
, who doesn't allow mischief and misbehaviour to happen. The adulterous
Adultery
Adultery is sexual infidelity to one's spouse, and is a form of extramarital sex. It originally referred only to sex between a woman who was married and a person other than her spouse. Even in cases of separation from one's spouse, an extramarital affair is still considered adultery.Adultery is...
wife of the story's hero is punished by being burnt alive and her secret lover, busted thanks to the loyal caretaker, is eaten alive by a summoned crocodile. Caretaker and crocodile are playing the role of justice
Justice
Justice is a concept of moral rightness based on ethics, rationality, law, natural law, religion, or equity, along with the punishment of the breach of said ethics; justice is the act of being just and/or fair.-Concept of justice:...
, whilst king Nebka plays the role of the story-ending destiny
Destiny
Destiny or fate refers to a predetermined course of events. It may be conceived as a predetermined future, whether in general or of an individual...
. Lepper and Liechtheim evaluate the depiction of king Nebka as being pretty positive. A strict but lawful pharaoh was a ideal for the people of author`s lifetime.
In story III. king Sneferu becomes a victim of the author`s courage to critic
Critic
A critic is anyone who expresses a value judgement. Informally, criticism is a common aspect of all human expression and need not necessarily imply skilled or accurate expressions of judgement. Critical judgements, good or bad, may be positive , negative , or balanced...
ize the monarchy
Monarchy
A monarchy is a form of government in which the office of head of state is usually held until death or abdication and is often hereditary and includes a royal house. In some cases, the monarch is elected...
as such. He depicts Sneferu as a fatuous fool, who is easy to please with superficial entertainment and who is unable to resolve a dispute with a little rowing maid. Sneferu must be extra get a priest to get rid of his trouble. With this course of the narrating and the embarrassing depiction of a pharaoh the author of Westcar dares to criticise the pharaohs of Egypt as such and makes story III. become some sort of satire
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
. Lepper points out, that the critics are hidden cleverly though - no wonder since the author had to be careful, for the Westcar Papyrus was possibly made for public entertainment, or, at least, made for public studying.
In story IV. king Khufu is characterised in a difficult-to-assess way. At one side he is depicted as ruthless when deciding to have a condemned prisoner become decapitated to test the said-so magical powers of the magician Dedi. At the other side Khufu is depicted as inquisitive, reasonable and generous: He accepts the outrage and following alternative offer of Dedi for the prisoner, questions the circumstances and contents of Dedi's prophecy and rewards the magician generously after all. The contradictory depiction of Khufu is object of great disputes between Egyptologists and historians up to this day. Especially earlier Egyptologists and historians such as Adolf Erman
Adolf Erman
Johann Peter Adolf Erman was a renowned Egyptologist and lexicographer.-Life:Born in Berlin, he was the son of Georg Adolf Erman and grandson of Paul Erman....
, Kurt Heinrich Sethe
Kurt Heinrich Sethe
Kurt Heinrich Sethe was a noted German Egyptologist and philologist from Berlin. He was a student of Adolf Erman...
and Wolfgang Helck
Wolfgang Helck
Hans Wolfgang Helck was a German Egyptologist, considered one of the most important Egyptologists of the 20th century. From 1956 until his retirement in 1979 he was a Professor at the University of Hamburg...
evaluated Khufus character as heartless and sacrilegious
Heresy
Heresy is a controversial or novel change to a system of beliefs, especially a religion, that conflicts with established dogma. It is distinct from apostasy, which is the formal denunciation of one's religion, principles or cause, and blasphemy, which is irreverence toward religion...
. They lean on the ancient Greek traditions of Herodot and Diodor, who described an exaggerated negative character image of Khufu, ignoring the paradoxical
Contradiction
In classical logic, a contradiction consists of a logical incompatibility between two or more propositions. It occurs when the propositions, taken together, yield two conclusions which form the logical, usually opposite inversions of each other...
(because positive) traditions the Egyptians themselves always taught. But other Egyptologists such as Dietrich Wildung see Khufu`s order as an act of mercy
Mercy
Mercy is broad term that refers to benevolence, forgiveness and kindness in a variety of ethical, religious, social and legal contexts.The concept of a "Merciful God" appears in various religions from Christianity to...
: the prisoner would have received his life back if Dedi actually had performed his magical trick. Wildung thinks that Dedi`s refusal was an allusion to the respect which Egyptians showed to human life. The ancient Egyptians were of the opinion that human life should not be misused for dark magic or similar evil things. Lepper and Liechtheim suspect that a difficult-to-assess depiction of Khufu was exactly what the author had planned. He wanted to create a mysterious character.
The fifth and last story tells about the female hero Rededjet (her name is also often read as Ruddedet) and her difficult birth of three sons. The sungod Ra orders his companions Isis, Meskhenet, Hekhet, Nephthys and Khnum to help Rededjet, to ensure the birth of the triplets and the beginning of a new dynasty. Lepper and Liechtheim both evaluate the story as some kind of narrated moral
Moral
A moral is a message conveyed or a lesson to be learned from a story or event. The moral may be left to the hearer, reader or viewer to determine for themselves, or may be explicitly encapsulated in a maxim...
which deals with the theme of justice and what happens to traitors. Lepper points out, that the story of Rededjet might have been inspired by the historical figure of queen Khentkaus I
Khentkaus I
Khentkaus I was a Queen of Ancient Egypt during the 4th dynasty. She may have been a daughter of Pharaoh Menkaure, wife of Shepseskaf and mother of Userkaf, but this is by no means certain. Her Mastaba at Giza - tomb LG100 - is located very close to Menkaure's pyramid complex...
, who lived and maybe ruled at the end of the Fourth dynasty
Fourth dynasty of Egypt
The fourth dynasty of ancient Egypt is characterized as a "golden age" of the Old Kingdom. Dynasty IV lasted from ca. 2613 to 2494 BC...
. Khentkaus I is demonstrably entitled as “mother of two kings” and for a long time it has been thought that she may have borne Userkaf and Sahure. But new evidence shows that at least Sahure had a different mother (Queen Neferhetepes
Neferhetepes (Userkaf)
Neferhetepes was the wife of the Ancient Egyptian king Userkaf, who was the first king of the Fifth Dynasty. She was also the mother of king Sahure who was the successor of Userkaf. Furthermore she was most likely mother of Meretnebty, who was the wife of Sahure...
), the implication of the Westcar Papyrus that the first three kings of the fifth dynasty had been siblings, is therefore incorrect. Since in the Westcar Papyrus Rededjet was concerned with the role of a future king's mother, the parallels between the biographies of the two ladies aroused special attention. The role of the maidservant is evaluated as being a key figure for a modern phrasing of indoctrination
Indoctrination
Indoctrination is the process of inculcating ideas, attitudes, cognitive strategies or a professional methodology . It is often distinguished from education by the fact that the indoctrinated person is expected not to question or critically examine the doctrine they have learned...
s about morality and betrayal. The maidservant wants to run her mistress down and is punished by destiny
Destiny
Destiny or fate refers to a predetermined course of events. It may be conceived as a predetermined future, whether in general or of an individual...
. The destiny is depicted here as a crocodile which snatches the traitor. The whole purpose of the whole happening is to ensure the beginning of a new dynasty and by making the only danger disappear, the author of the Westcar Papyrus artfully creates some kind of happy ending
Happy ending
A happy ending is an ending of the plot of a work of fiction in which almost everything turns out for the best for the protagonists, their sidekicks, and almost everyone except the villains....
.
The ending of Papyrus Westcar
Since first translations of the Westcar-Papyrus historians and Egyptologists dispute whether the story was finished or unfinished. Earlier evaluations seemed to show an abrupt ending after the death of the traitorous maid servant. But more recently linguistic investigations made by Verena Lepper and Miriam Liechtheim (especially by the first one) strengthen the conclusion, that the novel of pWestcar is definitely over after the story of the maid servant`s death. Lepper points out, that the sequenceSequence
In mathematics, a sequence is an ordered list of objects . Like a set, it contains members , and the number of terms is called the length of the sequence. Unlike a set, order matters, and exactly the same elements can appear multiple times at different positions in the sequence...
about the crocodile and its acting is repeated several times, just like some kind of a refrain
Refrain
A refrain is the line or lines that are repeated in music or in verse; the "chorus" of a song...
, which was a typical writing element in similar novels (and also it was in official documents) to close a report or novel. Furthermore Lepper argues that the papyrus leaves lots of free space after the ending, enough for a further short story.
Influences of Papyrus Westcar in later Egyptian tales
Verena Lepper and Miriam Lichtheim point out that the tales of Papyrus Westcar obviously inspired later authors to compose and write down similar novels. They refer to multiple and somewhat later ancient Egyptian writings in which magicians perform very similar magic tricks and make prophecies to a king. According to Lepper and Lichtheim, their stories are obviously inspired by the tale of Dedi. Descriptive examples are the papyri pAthen and The prophecy of Neferti. These novelNovel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
s show how popular the theme of prophesying already was during the Old Kingdom - just like in the story of the Westcar Papyrus. And they both talk about subalterns with magical powers similar to those of Dedi's. The Papyrus pBerlin 3023 contains the novel The Eloquent Peasant, in which the following phrase
Phrase
In everyday speech, a phrase may refer to any group of words. In linguistics, a phrase is a group of words which form a constituent and so function as a single unit in the syntax of a sentence. A phrase is lower on the grammatical hierarchy than a clause....
appears: “See, these are artists who create the existing anew, who even replace a severed head”, which can be interpreted as an allusion to the Westcar Papyrus. pBerlin 3023 contains another reference which strengthens the idea that many ancient Egyptian novels were influenced by Westcar Papyrus: column 232 contains the phrase sleeping until dawn, which appears nearly word-by-word in the Westcar Papyrus. A further descriptive example appears in The prophecy of Neferti: Just like in pWestcar, a subaltern is addressed by a king with “my brother” and the king himself is depicted as being accostable and simple-minded. And both novels talk about the same king: pharaoh Sneferu. The Papyrus pAthen contains the phrase: “...for these are the wise who can move waters and make a river flow at their mere will and want...”, which clearly refers to the wonder that the magicians Djadjaemankh and Dedi in pWestcar had performed.
Since pAthen, pBerlin 3023 and The prophecy of Neferti show the same manner of speaking and quaint phrases, equipped with numerous allusions to the wonders of Papyrus Westcar, Lepper and Lichtheim hold that Dedi, Ubaoner and Djadjaemankh must have been known to Egyptian authors for a astonishing long time.