The use of a frame story, which serves as a framework within which a number of other stories are told, is a very popular technique in storytelling. The collection of One Thousand and One Nights is a classic famous example, but the technique has a longer history with many of these stories coming from India, but also ancient Egypt.
The earliest known frame story from ancient Egypt is found in Papyrus Westcar, which initially contained at least five tales woven together by a narrative frame. King Khufu is entertained by his sons in this story, with each son telling of a great event from the past, while prince Hardedef introduces a magician who amazes the audience with wonders and prophesizes the birth of triplets, who were to be kings of the next Dynasty.
Another illustrative example is a Demotic story known as The Myth of the Eye of the Sun (Leiden Dem. Pap. I 384; abbreviated as ‘Mythus’ onwards). The story tells of Tefnut, daughter and ‘eye’ of the sun-god Re, who after a quarrel with her father runs away from Egypt and settles in Nubia. Re sends Thoth, the mediator for divine disputes, to convince her to come back. The animal fables told by Thoth are a means of appeasing the goddess who decides to return to Egypt, and is entertained by more fables during her journey. Thus the main story serves as a narrative frame for the fables, some of which occur in the Fables of Aesop as well.
The archeological evidence indicates that the stories of Mythus were performed for the public. De Cenival believes that settings like the bark chapel at Dendera, which is decorated with scenes from the myth of the distant goddess, would have provided the perfect backdrop for a public performance of Mythus, while von Lieven sees the blocks from Medamud as another potential venue. Literary texts suggest that story recitals involved storytellers drawing sketches on ostraca as well. It is possible that Tales of Wonder from Papyrus Westcar also involved storytelling performances.
From ‘The Myth of the Eye of the Sun’ to Aesop
Some of the fables incorporated into the Mythus have close cross-cultural parallels, and a famous example is The Lion in Search of a Man which is later echoed in Fables of Aesop.
This fable illustrates the power of speech, thereby signifying the impact Thoth hoped his speech would have on Tefnut as well. In the fable, a mouse ‘small in size, tiny in shape’ strayed into a lion’s paw and prayed to him, ‘his lord,’ to spare him as he is not a meal enough for a lion to taste. The mouse swears an oath before the lion that he will repay the favor but the lion mocks him. However, the lion soon becomes entrapped in fetters and, “as he lay suffering on the mountain, in the seventh hour of the night, Fate wished to make his joke come true, because of the boastful words that the lion had spoken, and made the little mouse stand before the lion. He said to him, ‘Do you recognize me? I am the little mouse whom you gave his breath (of life) as a gift’… The mouse saves the lion, proclaiming ‘it is beautiful to do good to him who does it in turn.’ Thus, the story emphasizes the theme of repaying good with good, but also shows that ‘even the weakest can help the strongest when fate so wills.’
The power of speech is a common theme in Egyptian stories. It is illustrated by a proverb in The Shipwrecked Sailor: ‘It is a man’s speech which saves him,’ and can be found in Mythus story of the two jackals as well, who convince the lion not to eat them. Upon encountering the lion, the jackals chose not to run, which puzzled the lion. They pragmatically explained that running would have been futile and they would have only exhausted themselves. ‘You would have overtaken us anyway and why should we tire ourselves before we are eaten?.’ The truth of their speech led the lion to let them go.
This story might have predated the Mythus and was then used in the collection, according to Posener, who argues that a Hieratic narrative fragment on Ramesside period ostracon (Deir el-Medina 1598 I) is connected with the fable of two jackals. Figural ostracon O. IFAO 2218 depicts two jackals and could also represent an illustration of the same fable. However, Jasnow questions this argument given that the text and the picture show the jackals mating, which bears no connection to the fable in Mythus. These two sources do, however, prove the existence of the same kind of story in the New Kingdom.
While the two fables show the lion releasing the mouse and the two jackals as a result of their speech, the Mythus story of the two vultures also teaches that violence leads to more violence, he who kills gets killed, and that Re dispenses the justice. In the story, each vulture claims to have a special ability, the first to be able to see everything, the second to be able to hear all, even god’s decrees. They then witness an example of the small being killed by the large, as the fly gets eaten by a lizard, followed by the lizard’s demise as the snake’s dinner, the latter getting consumed by a falcon and ending with the lion captured by a griffin. The griffin is identified as the messenger of Re, whose overpowering of the lion is meant to portray that killing, even of a fly, leads to being killed. The story shows that nothing can hide itself from Re, but also serves as a warning to Tefnut not to give in to temptation to attempt to inflict violence upon Re.
The animals in ancient Egyptian stories are usually portrayed realistically, as they are actually found in the real world. One of the exceptions is the griffin appearing in the aforementioned story of the two vultures as the most powerful animal; it is described as having the head of a falcon, the eyes of a man, the body of a lion, ears in the form of fish’s fins, and a serpent’s tail.
Animal fables were very common in ancient Egypt since the New Kingdom, and there is a number of illustrated papyri and ostraca of New Kingdom date that depict animals acting in human situations, such as festivities, labors and combats and are suggestive of narratives not yet recovered.
Animal fables from the Mythus though set out in Demotic texts were probably already in circulation in the Ramesside period as proven by ostraca. Another story from the Mythus that also appears in the Fables of Aesop is that of the cat and the vulture, who both take oaths not to take advantage of each other’s absence in order to harm their young ones. This fable is illustrated on an ostracon from the Neues Museum in Berlin, and the basic frame of the story also occurs in Mesopotamian Myth of Etana.
The Mythus wasn’t the only example of cross-cultural stories. Another example is a fable of The Swallow and the Sea, which also appears in Indian Panchatantra, dated as early as second century B.C. Similarly, the Greek Batrachomyomachia, the War of Frogs and Mice, which parodies the Iliad, owes something to the Egyptian theme of a War of Cats and Mice.
Aesop was enslaved in Egypt, which allowed him to get familiar with ancient Egyptian tales and fables. According to Herodotus, a fellow slave of storyteller Aesop was a girl named Rhodopis. Rhodopis is also mentioned in the writings of Strabo and this story is considered by some to be the earliest variant of Cinderella.
Fable-themed murals
Animal fables were not only recited, performed and written, but also served as a subject for mural paintings.The buildings whose walls once displayed those murals are lost to our spades, but the evidence of such practice is found in a fragment of a wall from a room in Deir el-Medina, which indicates that murals decorated walls of Egyptian houses. Other ostraca are also shown to have served as sketches for murals.
According to Phaedrus, Roman taverns were decorated with such themes and, as Brunner-Traut notes, it is left to us to assume that Egyptian taverns contained similar fable-themed murals. She also suggests that through the surviving wall painting fragments ancient Egyptian wall paintings can be considered the spiritual ancestors of wall painting in Pompeii.
Storytelling events are and have been popular throughout the world for thousands of years. However, tracing back some of the earlier influences to ancient Egypt sheds additional light on the origins, early meanings, interpretations and goals of these stories, as well as on the similarities and sharing of motifs and symbolism in stories by different cultures.
Our portrayal would not be complete without a full text of a fable. For this reason, we end the post with The Lion in Search of Man, the fable that gave rise to Aesop’s short story of The Lion and the Mouse.
There was a (lion on the) mountain who was mighty in strength and was good at hunting. (The small game of the) mountains knew fear of him and terror of him. One day it happened that he met a panther whose fur was stripped, whose skin was torn, who was half dead and half alive (because of his) wounds. The lion said: “How did you get into this condition? Who scraped your fur and stripped your skin?” The panther (said to him): “It was man.” The lion said to him: “Man, what is that?” The panther said to him: “There is no one more cunning than man. May you not fall into the hand of man!” The lion became enraged against man. He ran away from the panther in order to search for (man).
The lion encountered a team yoked…… so that one (bit) was in the mouth of the horse, the other (bit) (in the) mouth of the donkey. The lion said to them: “Who is who has done this to you?” They said: “It is man, our master.” He said to them: “Is man stronger than you?” They said: “Our lord, there is no one more cunning than man. May you not fall into the hand of man!” The lion became enraged against man; he ran away from them.
The same happened to him with an ox and a cow, whose horns were clipped, whose noses were pierced, and whose heads were roped. He questioned them; they told him the same.
The same happened with a bear whose claws had been removed and whose teeth had been pulled. He asked him, saying: “Is man stronger than you?” He said: “That is the truth. I had a servant who prepared my food. He said to me: ‘Truly, your claws stick out from your flesh; you cannot pick up food with them. Your teeth protrude; they do not let the food reach your mouth. Release me, and I will cause you to pick up twice as much feed!’ When I released him, he removed my claws and my teeth. I had no food and no strength without them! He strewed sand in my eyes and ran away from me.” The lion became enraged against man. He ran away from the bear in order to search for man.
He met a lion who was (tied to) a tree of the desert, the trunk being closed over his paw, and he was very distressed because he could not run away. The lion said to him: “How did you get into this evil condition? Who is he who did this to you?” The lion said to him: “It is man! Beware, do not trust him! Man is bad. Do not fall into the hand of man! I had said to him: ‘What work do you do?’ He said to me: ‘My work is giving old age. I can make for you an amulet, so that you will never die. Come, I will cut a tree for you and place it on your body as an amulet, so that you will never die.’ I went with him. He came to this tree of the mountain, sawed it, and said to me: ‘Stretch out your paw.’ I put my paw between the trunk; he shut its mouth on it.3 When he had ascertained of me that my paw was fastened, so that I could not run after him, he strewed sand into my eyes and ran away from me.
Then the lion laughed and said: “Man, if you should fall into my hand, I shall give you the pain that you inflicted on my companions on the mountain!”
Then, as the lion was walking in search of man, there strayed into his paw a little mouse, small in size, tiny in shape. When he was about to crush him, the mouse said to him: “Do not (crush) me, my lord the lion! If you eat me you will not be sated. If you release me you will not hunger for me either. If you give me my breath (of life) as a gift, I shall give you your own breath (of life) as a gift. If you spare me from your destruction, I shall make you escape from your misfortune.” The lion laughed at the mouse and said: “What is it that you could (do) in fact? Is there anyone on earth who would attack me?” But he swore an oath before him, saying: “I shall make you escape from your misfortune on your bad day!” Now although the lion considered the words of the mouse as a joke, he reflected, “If I eat him I shall indeed not be sated,” and he released him.
Now it happened that there was a huntsman with a net who set traps and had dug a pit before the lion. The lion fell into the pit and fell into the hand of man. He was placed in the net, he was bound with dry (leather) straps, he was tied with raw straps. Now as he lay suffering on the mountain, in the seventh hour of the night, Fate wished to make his joke come true, because of the boastful words that the lion had spoken, and made the little mouse stand before the lion. He said to him: “Do you recognize me? I am the little mouse to whom you gave his breath (of life) as a gift. I have come in order to repay you for it today, and to rescue you from your misfortune, since you are suffering. It is beautiful to do good to him who does it in turn.” Then the mouse set his mouth to the fetters of the lion. He cut the dry straps; he gnawed through all the raw straps with which he had been bound, and released the lion from his fetters. The mouse hid himself in his mane, and he went off with him to the mountain on that day.
E. Brunner-Traut, Egyptian Artists’ Sketches: Figured Ostraka from the Gayer-Anderson Collection in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Leiden, 1979
E. Teeter, ‘Animals in Egyptian Literature,’ in A History of the Animal World in the Ancient Near East (HdO 64), ed. B. J. Collins. Leiden, 2002
F. de Cenival, ‘Obscurités et Influences dans le Mythe de l’Oeil du Soleil,’ in Acts of the Seventh International Conference of Demotic Studies: Copenhagen 1999, ed. K.Ryholt. Copenhagen, 2002
J. E. Jay, Orality and Literacy in the Demotic Tales. Boston, 2016
J.G. Griffiths, Atlantis and Egypt. Cardiff, 1999
M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature,Vol. I: The Old and Middle Kingdoms. Los Angeles, 1973
M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, Vol. III: The Late Period. Los Angeles, 1980