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The Shipwrecked Sailor

Critique • Quotes • Text

Shipwrecked Sailor papyrusShipwrecked Sailor papyrus
Publication details ▽ Publication details △

Also known as
"The Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor"; "The Sailor and the Serpent"; "The Island of Enchantment"

First publication
c.1990 BCE

Literature form
Novel

Genre
Literary

Writing language
Ancient Egyptian

Author's country
Egypt

Length
Approx. 1,600 words in English translation

Notable lines

When Pharaoh Amen-em-het ruled Egypt in about the year 2000 BC he brought peace and prosperity to a country that had been torn by civil war and rebellion for nearly two hundred years.

— First line, trans. unknown

"I have such a tale to tell," answered the wanderer, 'that I will risk your anger with an easy mind."

— trans. unknown

"I was on an island with no other human being to be a companion to me. But such an island as no man has seen!"

— trans. unknown

Never shall I forget the horror of that moment. Moving towards me I saw a serpent thirty cubits long with a beard of more than two cubits. Its body was covered with golden scales and the scales round its eyes shaded off into blue as pure as lapis lazuli.

— trans. Flinders Petrie

"The serpent coiled up its whole length in front of where I lay with my face on the ground, reared its head high above me, and said: 'What has brought you, what has brought you here, little one? Say, what has brought you to my island?'" 

— trans. unknown

"'" ''"Converse is pleasing, and he who tastes of it passes over his misery.'"

— trans. Petrie

This is finished from its beginning unto its end, even as it was found in a writing. It is written by the scribe of cunning fingers, Ameni-amenaa; may he live in life, wealth, and health!

— Last line, trans. Petrie

 

Critique • Quotes • Text