by Damon Taylor
Sanderson Beck stated that long ago the land of Egypt was under the ocean. Then for a time it was a tropical forest, but with the gradual emergence of Africa this changed to savanna and then to prairie and finally into a huge desert. During this long pr ocess the Egyptians who had already lived there moved closer to the Nile River until they were congregated within a few miles of its banks or within its which had spreaded out before entering the Mediterranean Sea. In contrast to the surrounding desert, this lane was quite fertile, supplying them with wild barley, fish, ducks, geese, turtles, crocodiles, hippopotami, and other game animals and plant food (1).
Their first homes followed the traditional pattern as oval huts made from mud. During the sixth millennium BC they how to domesticate wheat, barley, sheep, goats, and cattle. Flax was grown, spun into thread, and woven into linen for clothing. Genetic ally the ancient Egyptians were a mixture of African, Asian, and Mediterranean peoples. The Egyptian language is of Semitic origin (1).
They were religious, and supplied food and other items to their dead in their graves. Many ideas may have been communicated to them through trade routes from Mesopotamia. Evidence definitely indicates that Sumerian seals were adopted by Egyptians. Egyp tian art shows a quick development of monumental architecture using bricks in recessed walls of decorative paneling using Sumerian artistic motifs, displaying a hero between two beasts, fabulous animals with intertwined necks, and Mesopotamian boats (1).
The most important idea the Egyptians adopted from the Sumerians was writing. Egyptian hieroglyphics, while a different language, are based on the same principles as Sumerian pictographs, ideograms, and phonograms, both using the rebus principle depicti ng a syllable to convey additional meaning. As boats traveled up and down the Nile and populations producing abundant food with irrigation systems increased, the inevitable social complexities developed. In Egypt this was divided into two states, the lowe r Delta in the north heralded by a red crown and Upper Egypt in the south which was symbolized by lily plant and a white crown (2). They were also the first to create short stories such as "The Eloquent Peasant" which is the book that we are going to talk about.
In Sanderson Beck's interpretation of the story of the Eloquent Peasant, it is about how difficult it could be for a poor person to obtain justice. A peasant named Khun-Anup, who lived in Salt-Field who had a wife named Marye. Khun-Anup had packed his d onkeys with food and goods for trade nad was leaving his wife for Herakleopolis (the capital of Upper Egypt) to bring food for his children. A man named Nemtynakht who worked for one of the vassals of the high steward, Rensi, had seen the donkeys and plot ted how he could get one of them. He told his servant to place a sheet across the narrow path between the river and his barley fields so that the donkeys could not pass without either treading on the clothes or trampling on the barley. When one of Khun- Anup's donkeys had ate some of the barley, Nemtynakht stated that he should seize Khun-Anup's donkey for eating his barley and when Khun-Anup tried to reason with him, Nemtynakht beat him with a stick of green tamarisk and took all his donkeys and food ba ck to his domain without letting Khun-Anup complain aloud (1).
After petitioning Nemtynakht for ten days futilely, the peasant went to Herakleopolis to petition the high steward Rensi, who made an accusation against Nemtynakht before his magistrates, but they assumed that Khun-Anup had left his master and decided th at he should only replace the salts. So Khun-Anup went to Rensi and pleaded for justice, and the steward went to King Nebkaure telling him that an eloquent peasant had been robbed by his subject and said that he was pleased of his speech. The king then ordered food to be given to Khun-Anup and his family secretly, because wanted only to hear the peasant's speeches so he could have them written.
The peasant petitioned the steward again, accusing the magistrates and him of wrongdoing when they should right wrongs. In condemning their negligence that Khun-Anup waxed rhetorical and came back a third time to complain some more and then a fourth tim e and a fifth. On the sixth time he said that the Nemtynakht was the robber and Rensi caused the grief. Khun-Anup had petitioned and spoke a seventh, eighth, and ninth time, declaring as he left that he intended to petition Anubis next in the world of th e dead. Then the steward had him recalled and had all his previous speeches read aloud to the king, who was pleased more than anything else in the entire country. The king finally tells Rensi to make his own judgement, which was that Khun-Anup was entit led to all of the possessions that Nemtynakht had.
According to Miriam Lichteim, the story consists of a narrative frame and nine poetic speeches. It is both a serious disquisition on the need for justice, and a parable on the utility of fine speech. The connection between the two themes is achieved by m eans of an ironic standard in the narrative frame (4). For example, after Khun-Anup has been robbed and has laid his complaint before the magistrate in a stirring plea, the latter is so delighted with this unlearned man's eloquence that he reports it to t he king; and on the king's orders the magistrate goads the peasant to continue pleading until the poor man is completely exhausted. Only then does he receive justice and ample rewards.
The tension between the studied silence of the magistrate and the increasingly despairing speeches of the peasant is the operative principle that moves the action forward. And the mixture of seriousness and irony, the intertwining of a plea for justice w ith a demonstration of the value of rhetoric, is the very essence of the author's work.
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