Summary
Narrated in the past tense by Sinuhe, a royal attendant to the Egyptian king, R. B. Parkinson’s translation of the Ancient Egyptian text The Tale of Sinuhe is told in forty stanzas of poetic verse. The Tale of Sinuhe is presented as Sinuhe’s autobiography, which has been inscribed on the wall of his burial tomb upon his death.
The fictional account of Sinuhe’s life begins with a list of Sinuhe’s royal titles as a loving follower of the king. Then, in his first-person voice, Sinuhe comments that he was a royal courtier who worked in the royal chambers, attending to the king, queen, and their children. Sinuhe recounts that the godly King Sehetepibre died, rising to heaven and becoming united with the sun, his “divine flesh mingling with its creator.” People living in the royal residence fall silent in mourning. All noblemen patricians of the royal court are bowed in grief.
The king’s eldest son Senwosret is returning from an expedition to the Libyan land, where he has taken captives and stolen cattle. Messengers are sent to the western border to tell the prince about his father’s death. They find him at night and he immediately leaves with the messengers without telling the others on the expedition. Eventually one of the royal children who has been accompanying the prince on his Libyan expedition is notified about what has happened to the king. Sinuhe, who is standing on duty, overhears the news. Sinuhe’s heart seizes and his limbs tremble uncontrollably. Sinuhe immediately hides by jumping between two bushes, and he waits until the messenger leaves the road.
Instead of returning to the royal residence, where he expects conflict in the wake of the king’s death, Sinuhe travels south alone. He hadn’t considered what it would be like to live after the king’s death. He crosses Lake Maaty in the region of the Sycamore, then arrives at the Isle of Sneferu. He spends the night on the edge of a field and makes an early start at dawn. He passes a man who greets him, but Sinuhe is afraid to engage. At suppertime, Sinuhe arrives at Cattle-Quay.
On a boat or raft with no rudder, Sinuhe is blown by the west wind. He passes east of Iaku above the Lady of the Red Mountain. Walking north, he reaches The Walls of the Ruler, which were built to keep Syrians from invading. Afraid the watcher standing duty on the wall will see him, Sinuhe crouches in a bush until nighttime, at which point he walks again. By dawn he reaches Peten, and settles on an island.
Scorched by the sun and attacked by a feeling of thirst, Sinuhe believes his parched throat is what death tastes like. However, his spirits rise and he regains strength in his tired limbs when he hears cattle lowing and sees a group of Syrians. One of their leaders has been to Egypt before, and he recognizes Sinuhe. The Syrian gives Sinuhe water and boils milk for him. Sinuhe goes with the man back to his tribe, who welcome him, and treat him well.
Recuperated, Sinuhe sets out for Byblos. At Qedem, Sinuhe spends half a year. Then he meets Amunenshi, the Palestinian prince who rules upper Retjenu. Amunenshi tells Sinuhe to come with him to Retjenu, where Sinuhe will be happy to speak with other Egyptians. The other Egyptians who are with Amunenshi vouch for Sinuhe.
At Retjenu, Amunenshi asks Sinuhe why he left the royal residence. Sinuhe tells Amunenshi that the Dual King Sehetepibre “has gone to the horizon,” and that he doesn’t know how he ended up where he is. Speaking in half-truths, Sinuhe says he was on the expedition to the Libyan land when he heard the news of the king’s death. He says his heart failed and carried him “off on the ways of flight.” He says that he is not in disgrace, as far as he knows. No messengers have come seeking him. Sinuhe says he doesn’t know what brought him to this new country, as if God has planned it.
Amunenshi asks how Egypt is without the God-like king, who so many other countries feared. Sinuhe answers with abundant praise for the deceased king’s son, the new king. He says the new king doesn’t stay in the palace like his father, but is a peerless hero who engages in combat. He is a vengeful smasher of barbarian foreheads who never turns his back on an enemy in cowardice. But he is also kind and sweet, conquering not just through brute strength but through love. The people in his city love him and exult him. From birth he has been a king, and the land of Egypt rejoices since his rule began.
Sinuhe says the king will conquer southern lands, and recommends Amunenshi acknowledge his loyalty, because the king will be good to those who are loyal. Amunenshi says that “Egypt is certainly happy.” He then promises to do Sinuhe good while he stays with him. He marries Sinuhe to his eldest daughter and bestows Sinuhe with rule of a borderland called Iaa. Figs and grapes grow there, the wine flows more freely than water, and there is plentiful honey and moringa oil and fruiting trees. There is also barley and numberless cattle. Amunenshi then appoints Sinuhe as ruler of the best tribe in the country. Sinuhe enjoys the abundant strong drinks, wine, roast fowl and wild game, and milk-infused sweets that people make for him.
Analysis
As a fictional autobiography supposedly inscribed on the walls of a burial pyramid, The Tale of Sinuhe begins with establishing who Sinuhe is. The fact that Sinuhe is a royal courtier who served the king rather than a king himself is significant because funerary monuments in Ancient Egypt would have been reserved for rulers who were said to become gods upon death. The premise that Sinuhe, an average person, has a burial monument with his life story inscribed in it, foreshadows the rise to greatness his tale will recount.
The death of King Sehetepibre acts as an inciting incident in the story—an event that precipitates the events to come. The poetic way Sinuhe speaks of the king’s death also shines a light on an Ancient Egyptian understanding of God and the afterlife. Rather than simply state that the king died, Sinuhe conceives of the king, in death, as ascending to heaven and becoming united with the sun god, a deity first called Ra and later merged with other significant conceptions of God. These lines are significant because they exhibit the Ancient Egyptian belief in the godliness of rulers, who were considered direct heirs to the entity that created the world.
While the people of the palace mourn the king’s death, his son Senwosret does not receive the news until messengers reach him in Libya, where he has been on a conquest to take people captive and steal herds of cattle. As a juxtaposition to the exalted descriptions of the king and his son, Sinuhe enters the narrative as something of an afterthought. Standing—literally—on the sidelines of events, Sinuhe overhears a messenger delivering the news of the king’s death to one of the royal children. Sinuhe is overcome by a trembling in his body and a stillness in his heart—a physiological response not unlike a panic attack.
Acting on the panic, Sinuhe impulsively flees his post as a royal courtier to set off to travel foreign lands alone. The automatic nature of his desertion suggests that little thought has gone into the decision, the only explanation he gives being a half-hearted desire to keep himself away from potential power conflicts that might happen in the wake of the king’s death. In this action, which symbolizes Sinuhe’s separation from all that is good in Egyptian life, Sinuhe displays his cowardly imperfection as a mortal being. He will later make sense of his dream-like flight from Egypt as an intervention from God.
The theme of divine intervention enters the story most prominently when Sinuhe is lucky enough to happen across a kind Syrian who recognizes him from Egypt. Just when Sinuhe is about to die of dehydration, he is rescued and nursed back to health. God seems to intervene again with the introduction of Amunenshi, a Palestinian prince who lavishes Sinuhe with a comfortable life in Retjenu. Amunenshi’s generosity toward Sinuhe can be understood as a reward for the praise Sinuhe gives for the Egyptian king; in the scene, Amunenshi seems to stand in for the king, returning Sinuhe’s lengthy commemoration with a wife, land, crops, and serfs. With this fortunate turn of events, the theme of the value of loyalty enters the narrative, and Sinuhe goes from being a wanderer with nothing to a prominent tribe leader in Retjenu.
