The next fortnightly book will be The Tale of Sinuhe and Other Ancient Egyptian Poems, 1940-1640 BC, one of the Oxford World's Classics books. It is edited by R. B. Parkinson and purports to include all surviving literary works of Ancient Egypt that are still relatively complete and relatively intelligible. The Tale of Sinuhe, of course, is the most famous. It tells of a courtier (Za-Nehet or Sinuhe) who flees the Egyptian court on the death of Pharaoh Amenemhat I and ends up in the court of a king in Retjenu, which is roughly the Egyptian name for Syria and Canaan, but eventually in his old age returns home.
The works that are included in this edition:
Tales
1. The Tale of Sinuhe
2. The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant
3. The Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor
4. The Tale of King Cheops' Court
Discourses
5. The Words of Neferti
6. The Words of Khakheperreseneb
7. The Dialogue of a Man and his Soul
8. The Dialogue of Ipuur and the Lord of All
Teachings
9. The Teaching of King Amenemhat
10. The Teaching for King Merikare
11. The 'Loyalist' Teaching
12. The Teaching of the Vizier Ptahhotep
13. The Teaching of Khety
It also ends with a selection of some of the fragments we have of other Egyptian literary works from the period.
